Katherine sat silent a little after this. Her first thought was that she was balked then altogether in her first personal wish, the great delight and triumph of setting Stella right and restoring to her her just share in the inheritance. This great disappointment struck her at once, and almost brought the tears to her eyes. Stella would now have it all of her own right, and would never know, or at least believe, what had been Katherine’s loving intention. She felt this blow. In a moment she realised that Stella would not believe it—that she would think any assertion to that effect to be a figment, and remained fully assured that her sister would have kept everything to herself if she had had the power. And this hurt Katherine beyond expression. She would have liked to have had that power! Afterwards there came into her mind a vague sense of old injustice and unkindness to herself, the contemptuous speech about the cottage, and that this was all she would want. Her father thought so; he had thought so always, and so had Stella. It never occurred to Katherine that Stella would be anxious to do her justice, as she would have done to Stella. That was an idea that never entered her mind at all. She was thrown back eight years ago to the time when she lived habitually in the cold shade. After all, was not that the one thing that she had been certain of all her life? Was it not a spell which had never been broken, which never could be broken? She murmured to herself dully: “A cottage—which was all I should want.”
“I said to your father at the time everything that could be said.” Mr. Sturgeon wanted to show his sympathy, but he felt that, thoroughly as everybody present must be persuaded that old Tredgold was an old beast, it would not do to say so in his own house on his funeral day.
The other executor said nothing except “Tchich, tchich!” but he wiped his bald head with his handkerchief and internally thanked everything that he knew in the place of God—that dark power called Providence and other such—that Katherine Tredgold had refused to have anything to say to his Fred. Dr. Burnet was not visible at all to Katherine except in a long mirror opposite, where he appeared like a shadow behind her chair.
“And this poor man,” said Katherine, looking towards poor Bob Tredgold, with his staring eyes; “is there nothing for him?”
“Not a penny. I could have told you that; I have told him that often enough. I’ve known him from a boy. He shall keep his corner in my office all the same. I didn’t put him there, though he thinks so, for his brother’s sake.”
“He shall have a home in the cottage—when it is built,” said Katherine, with a curious smile; and then she became aware that in both these promises, the lawyer’s and her own, there was a bitter tone—an unexpressed contempt for the man who was her father, and who had been laid in his grave that day.
“I hope,” she said, “this is all that is necessary to-day; and may I now, if you will not think it ungracious, bid you good-bye? I shall understand it all better when I have a little time to think.”
She paused, however, again after she had shaken hands with them. “There is still one thing. I am going to meet my sister when she arrives. May I have the—the happiness of telling her? I had meant to give her half, and it is a little disappointment; but I should like at least to carry the news. Thanks; you must address to her here. Of course she will come at once here, to her own home.”
She scarcely knew whose arm it was that was offered to her, but took it mechanically and went out, not quite clear as to where she was going, in the giddiness of the great change.
“This is a strange hearing,” Dr. Burnet said.