Presently she came back with her hat on. She carried her bearskins in her hand, and under the shade of the broad black beaver her face wore an expression of anxious thought.
"Katherine,"—she held out her cape and muff, and Katherine remembered that they were those which Vincent had given her,—"I suppose I can wear my furs still, even if I am in mourning?"
There was neither scorn nor irony in the look that Katherine turned on her, and Audrey understood this time. As plainly as looks can speak, it condemned her as altogether lighter than vanity itself; and while condemning, it forgave her.
"He gave them to me, you know," she said at last. Audrey's pathos generally came too late.
She drove away, wrapped in her furs, and for once unconscious of her own beauty, so dissatisfied was she with the part she had played in the great tragedy. Somehow her parts seemed always to dwindle this way in retrospect.
That afternoon a parcel arrived, addressed to Hardy by his publishers. Katherine opened it. It contained early copies of the Pioneer-book, the book that after all Vincent was never to see.
She saw with a pang her own design blazing in gold on the cover, and her frontispiece sketch of the author. Then she turned to the dedication page, and read—
to her
who has inspired
all that there may be of good in it
this book is dedicated
by her affectionate cousin,
VINCENT HARDY.