For a moment surprise and admiration engrossed her mind, then quickly following came another thought. The letter!—where was the letter? Was there no letter enclosed? Katrine dashed at the scattered wrappings, shook them apart, and failing to find any trace of what she sought, fumbled with the lid of the box itself. It was tightly jammed, but a little coaxing set it free, and in the cavity lay a sheet of foreign paper, closely covered with a man’s strong, well-formed writing.
Katrine seated herself on the chair by the window, with a strange, dazed feeling of expectancy. A narrow strip of garden separated the side of the house from the lane without. With half-conscious eyes she saw a blue-robed figure strolling slowly by, followed by a fat, waddling pug. Mary Biggs, the lawyer’s sister, taking Peter Biggs for his morning’s stroll. Approaching from the opposite direction came a trim figure in grey, sandwiched between two small girls, with skirts cut short to display shapely brown legs. Mrs Slades’s governess taking the children for their morning stroll... The little hamlet was pursuing its quiet, machine-like way; no tremor of excitement had disturbed its calm, but in Katrine’s room was the scent of the East, and out of the silence six thousand miles away, a man laid bare to her his heart.
Chapter Three.
“Lebong, May 10, 19—.
“Captain Blair presents his compliments to Miss Beverley, and takes the liberty of forwarding for her acceptance an antique brass box, which he trusts may be considered worthy of a place in her collection.
“Katrine! It is such a delicious little name; it is the only name by which I have ever heard you called. Will you forgive a lonely fellow, six thousand miles away, if he writes to you as he thinks? It’s ridiculous to let conventions throw their shadow across the world, but if you will have it, enclosed is the conventional, colourless, third-person missive. Keep it, and tear up the rest unread. I give you full liberty to do it.
“But you won’t.
“I might as well confess at once,—that box is a delusion and a snare. I didn’t ‘hit upon it’; I searched for it far and wide. Properly regarded, it is not a box at all; it is an excuse; a decoy. I wanted one badly, and it was the best I could find.