"'Long have I been true to you. Now I'm true no longer.' Too bad, Eeny, we should lose the wedding, and one wedding, they say, makes many."
"Too bad!" echoed Eeny, indignantly. "Oh, Doctor Frank, it was cruel of Rose, wasn't it? You would hardly know poor Kate now."
"Hush!" said the Doctor, "here she comes!"
A tall, slender figure came out from the orchard path, book in hand, and advanced slowly towards the house. Was it the ghost, the wraith, the shadow of beautiful Kate Danton? The lovely golden hair, glittering in the dying radiance of the sunset, and coiled in shining twists round the head, was the same; the deep large eyes, so darkly blue, were clear and cloudless as ever, and yet changed totally in expression. The queenly grace that always characterized her, characterized her still; but how wasted the supple form, how shadowy and frail it had grown. The haggard change in the pale face, the nervous contraction of the mouth, the sunken eyes, with those dark circles, told their eloquent tale.
"Poor child!" Doctor Frank said, with a look of unspeakable pity and tenderness; "it was cruel!"
Eeny ran away to change her dress. Grace lightly dusted the furniture, and her brother stood by the window and watched that fragile-looking girl coming slowly up through the amber air.
"How tired she looks!" he said.
"Kate?" said Grace, coming over. "She is always like that now. Tired at getting up, tired at lying down, listless and apathetic always. If Reginald Stanford had murdered her, it would hardly have been a more wicked act."
Her brother did not reply.
A few minutes later, Kate walked into the room, still with that slow, weary step. She looked at the new-comer with listless indifference, spoke a few words of greeting with cold apathy, and then retreated to another window, and bent her eyes on her book.