“How would I appear by the side of those ladies?” she suddenly asked, her countenance changing as Morris replied that it was almost impossible to think of her as associated with the Camerons, she was so wholly unlike them in every respect.
“I don’t believe I shocked Wilford so very much,” Katy rejoined, reproachfully, while again a heavy pain shot through Morris’s heart, for he saw more and more how Wilford Cameron was mingled with every thought of the young girl, who continued: “And if he was satisfied, his mother and sisters will be. Any way, I don’t want you to make me feel how different I am from them.”
There was tears now on Katy’s face, and casting aside all selfishness, Morris wound his arm around her, and smoothing her golden hair, just as he used to do when she was a child and came to him to be soothed, he said, very gently,
“My poor Kitty, you do like Wilford Cameron; tell me honestly—is it not so?”
“Yes, I guess I do,” and Katy’s voice was a half sob. “I could not help it, either, he was so kind, so—I don’t know what, only I could not help doing what he bade me. Why, if he had said, ‘Jump overboard, Katy Lennox,’ I should have done it, I know—that is, if his eyes had been upon me, they controlled me so absolutely. Can you imagine what I mean?”
“Yes, I understand. There was the same look in Bell Cameron’s eye, a kind of mesmeric influence which commanded obedience. They idolize Wilford, and I dare say he is worthy of their idolatry. One thing at least is in his favor—the crippled Jamie, for whose opinion I would give more than all the rest, seemed to worship his Uncle Will; talking of him continually, and telling how kind he was, sometimes staying up all night to carry him in his arms when the pain in his back was more than usually severe. So there must be a good, kind heart in Wilford Cameron, and if my Cousin Kitty likes him, as she says she does, and he likes her as I believe he must, why, I hope——”
Morris Grant could not finish the sentence, for he did not hope that Wilford Cameron would win the gem he had so long coveted as his own.
He might give Kitty up because she loved another best. He was generous enough to do that, but if he did it, she must never know how much it cost him, and lest he should betray himself he could not to-night talk with her longer of Wilford Cameron. It was time too for Kitty to go home, but she did not seem to remember it until Morris suggested to her that her mother might be uneasy if she stayed away much longer, and so they went together across the fields, the shadows all gone from Katy’s heart, but lying so dark and heavy around Morris Grant, who was glad when he could leave Katy at the farm-house door and go back alone to the quiet library, where only God could witness the mighty struggle, it was for him to say, “Thy will be done.” And while he prayed, Katy, in her humble bedroom, with her head nestled close to Helen’s neck, was telling her of Wilford Cameron, who, when they went down the rapids and she had cried with fear, had put his arm around her trying to quiet her, and who once again, on the mountain overlooking Lake George, had held her hand a moment, while he pointed out a splendid view seen through the opening trees. And Helen, listening, knew that Katy’s heart was lost, and that for Wilford Cameron to deceive her now would be a cruel thing.
CHAPTER III.
WILFORD CAMERON.
The day succeeding Katy Lennox’s return to Silverton was rainy and cold for the season, the storm extending as far westward as the city of New York, and making Wilford Cameron shiver as he stepped from the Hudson River cars into the carriage waiting for him, first greeting pleasantly the white-gloved driver, who, closing the carriage door, mounted to his seat and drove his handsome bays in the direction of No. —— Fifth Avenue. And Wilford, leaning back among the cushions, thought how pleasant it was to be home again, feeling glad, as he frequently did, that the home was in every particular unexceptionable. The Camerons, he knew, were an old and highly respectable family, while it was his mother’s pride that, go back as far as one might, on either side there could not be found a single blemish, or a member of whom to be ashamed. On the Cameron side there were millionaires, merchant princes, bankers, and stockholders, professors and scholars, while on hers, the Rossiter side, there were LL. D.’s and D. D.’s, lawyers and clergymen, authors and artists, beauties and bells, the whole forming an illustrious line of ancestry, admirably represented and sustained by the present family of Camerons, occupying the brown-stone front, corner of —— street and Fifth Avenue, where the handsome carriage stopped, and a tall figure ran quickly up the marble steps. There was a soft rustle of silk, an odor of delicate perfume, and from the luxurious chair before the fire kindled in the grate, a lady rose and advanced a step or two towards the parlor door. In another moment she was kissing the young man bending over her and saluting her as mother, kissing him quietly, properly, as the Camerons always kissed. She was very glad to have Wilford home again, for he was her favorite child; and brushing the rain-drops from his coat she led him to the fire, offering him her own easy-chair, and starting herself in quest of another. But Wilford held her back, and making her sit down, he drew an ottoman beside her, and then asked her first how she had been, then where his sisters were, and if his father had come home—for there was a father, a quiet, unassuming man, who stayed all day in Wall street, seldom coming home in time to carve at his own dinner table, and when he was at home, asking for nothing except to be left by his fashionable wife and daughters to himself, free to smoke and doze over his evening paper in the seclusion of his own reading-room.