"Quite right. I will leave you, and tell the boys you cannot see them till to-morrow." So Miss Payne, who had a grand power of minding her own affairs and abstaining from troublesome questions, softly closed the door behind her.
It took some time to rally from the overwhelming humiliation of this crisis. Katherine came slowly back to herself, yet not quite herself. Miss Payne had been so much disturbed by her loss of appetite, of energy, of color, that she had insisted on consulting the local doctor, who pronounced her to be suffering from low fever and nervous depression. He prescribed tonics and warm sea-water baths, which advice Katherine meekly followed. Soon, to the pride of the Sandbourne Æsculapius, a young practitioner, she showed signs of improvement, and declared herself perfectly well.
Perhaps the tonic which had assisted her to complete recovery was a letter which reached her about a week after the interview that had affected her so deeply. It was addressed in large, firm, clear writing, which was strange to her.
"I venture to trouble you with a few words," (it ran) "because when last I saw you I was profoundly impressed by the suffering you could not hide. I cannot refrain from writing to entreat you will accept the position in which you are placed. Having done your best to rectify what is now irrevocable, be at peace with your conscience. I am the only individual entitled to complain or interfere with your succession, and I fully, freely make over to you any rights I possess. Had your uncle's fortune passed to me, it would have been an injustice for which I should have felt bound to atone: nor would you have refused my proposition to this effect. Consider this page of your life blotted out, casting it from your mind. Use and enjoy your future as a woman of your nature, so far as I understand it, can do. It will probably be long before I see you again—which I regret the less because it might pain you to meet me before time has blunted the keen edge of your self-reproach. Absent or present, however, I shall always be glad to know that you are well and happy.
"Will you let me have a line in reply?
"Yours faithfully,
Miles Errington."
The perusal of this letter brought Katherine the infinite relief of tears. How good and generous he was! How heartily she admired him! How gladly she confessed her own inferiority to him! Forgiven by him, she could face life again with a sort of humble courage. But oh! it would be impossible to meet his eyes. No; years would not suffice to blunt the keen self-reproach which the thought of him must always call up—the shame, the pride, the dread, the tender gratitude. Long and passionately she wept before she could recover sufficiently to write him the reply he asked. Then it seemed to her that the bitterness and cruel remorse had been melted and washed away by these warm grateful tears. He forgave her, and she could endure the pressure of her shameful secret more easily in future. At last she took her pen, and feeling that the lines she was about to trace would be a final farewell, wrote:
"My words must be few, for none I can find will express my sense of the service yours have done me. I accept your gift. I will try and follow your advice. Shall the day ever come when you will honor me by accepting part of what is your own? Thank you for your kind suggestion not to meet me; it would be more than I could bear. Yours, Katherine."
Then with deepest regret she tore up his precious letter into tiny morsels, and striking a match, consumed them. It would not do to incur the possibility of such a letter being read by any third pair of eyes. Moreover, she was careful to post her reply herself. And so, as Errington said, that page of her story was blotted out, at least, from the exterior world, but to her own mind it would be ever present: round this crisis her deepest, most painful, ay, and sweetest memories would cling. It was past, however, and she must take up her life again.
She felt something of the weakness, the softness, which convalescents experience when first they begin to go about after a long illness, the dreamy, quiet pleasure of coming back to life. The boys continued to be her deepest interest. So time went on, and no one seemed to perceive the subtle change which had sobered her spirit.
The season was over, and Mrs. Ormonde descended on Cliff Cottage for a parting visit. She had only given notice of her approach by a telegram.