“Do you love Morris?” Helen asked, abruptly, without waiting for Katy to finish her sentence.
For an instant the hands stopped in their work, and Katy’s eyes filled with tears, which dropped into her lap as she replied,
“More than I wish I did, seeing I must always tell him no. It’s strange, too, how the love for him keeps coming, in spite of all I can do. I have not been there since, nor spoken with him until last Sunday, but I knew the moment he entered the church, and when in the first chant I heard his voice, my fingers trembled so that I could hardly play, while all the time my heart goes out after the rest I always find with him. But it cannot be. Oh, Helen! I wish Wilford had never known that Morris loved me.”
She was sobbing now, with her head in Helen’s lap, and Helen, smoothing her bright hair, said gently,
“You do not reason correctly. It is right for you to answer Morris yes, and Wilford would say so, too. When I received your letter I read it to Bell, who then told what Wilford said before he died. You must have forgotten it, darling. He referred to a time when you would cease to be his widow, and he said he was willing,—said so to her, and you. Do you remember it, Katy?”
“I do now, but I had forgotten. I was so stunned then, so bewildered, that it made no impression. I did not think he meant Morris, Helen; do you believe he meant Morris?” and lifting up her face Katy looked at her sister with a wistfulness which told how anxiously she waited for the answer.
“I know that he meant Morris,” Helen replied. “Both Bell and her father think so, and they bade me tell you to marry Dr. Grant, with whom you will be so happy.”
“I cannot. It is too late. I told him no, and Helen, I told him a falsehood, too, which I wish I might take back,” she added. “I said I was sorry he ever loved me. when I was not, for the knowing that he had made me very happy. My conscience has smitten me cruelly for that falsehood, told not intentionally, for I did not consider what I said.”
Here was an idea at which Helen caught at once, and the next morning she went to Linwood and brought Morris home with her. He had been there two or three times since his return from Washington, but not since Katy’s refusal, and her cheeks were scarlet as she met him in the parlor and tried to be natural. He did not look unhappy. He was not taking his rejection very hard, after all, she thought, and the little lady felt a very little piqued to find him so cheerful, when she had scarcely known a moment’s quiet since the day she carried him the custards and forgot to bring away her umbrella.
As it had rained that day, so it did now, a decided, energetic rain, which set in after Morris came, and precluded the possibility of his going home that night.