She was very earnest in her attempts to prove that Genevra was still a lawful wife, so earnest that a dark suspicion entered Morris’s mind, finding vent in the question, “Katy, don’t you love your husband, that you try so hard to prove he is not yours?”
There were red spots all over Katy’s face and neck as she saw the meaning put upon her actions, and, covering her face with her hands, she sobbed violently as she replied, “I do, oh, yes, I do! I never loved any one else. I would have died for him once. Maybe I would die for him now; but, Morris, he is disappointed in me. Our tastes are not alike, and we made a great mistake, or Wilford did when he took me for his wife. I was better suited to most anybody else, and I have been so wicked since, forgetting all the good I ever knew, forgetting prayer save as I went through the form from old habit’s sake; forgetting God, who has punished me so sorely that every nerve smarts with the stinging blows.”
Oh, how lovingly, how earnestly Morris talked to Katy then, telling her of Him who smites but to heal, who chastens not in anger, and would lead the lost one back into the quiet fold where there was perfect peace.
And Katy, listening eagerly, with her great blue eyes fixed upon his face, felt that to experience that of which he talked, was worth more than all the world beside. Gradually, too, there stole over her the rest she always felt with him—the indescribable feeling which prompted her to care for nothing except to do just what he bade her do, knowing it was right; so when he said to her, “You cannot go home with me, Katy; your duty is to remain here in your husband’s house,” she offered no remonstrance. Indeed, Morris doubted if she fully understood him, she looked so sick and appeared so strange.
“It is not safe for you to be alone. Esther must stay with you,” he continued, feeling her rapid pulse and noticing the alternate flushing and paling of her cheek.
A fever was coming on, he feared, and summoning Esther to the room, he said,
“Your mistress is very sick. You must stay with her till morning, and if she grows worse, let me know. I shall be in the library.”
Then, with a few directions with regard to the medicine he fortunately had with him, he left the chamber, and repaired to the library below, where he spent the few remaining hours of the night, pondering on the strange story he had heard, and praying for poor Katy whose heart had been so sorely wounded.
The quick-witted Esther saw that something was wrong, and traced it readily to Wilford, whose exacting nature she thoroughly understood. She had not been blind during the two years and a half she had been Katy’s maid, and no impatient word of Wilford’s, or frown upon his face, had escaped her when occurring in her presence, while Katy’s uniform sweetness and entire submission to his will had been noted as well, so that in Esther’s opinion Wilford was a domestic tyrant, and Katy was an angel. Numerous were her conjectures as to the cause of the present trouble, which must be something serious, or Katy had never telegraphed for Dr. Grant, as she felt certain she had.
“Whatever it is, I’ll stand her friend,” she said, as she bent over her young mistress, who was talking of Genevra and the grave at St. Mary’s, which was no grave at all.