“I beg you will not think,” she cried, “that I blame you for anything. Oh, no, no! You have never been false to me. There was never anything between us. You were as free and independent as any man could be.”
“Let me tell you then as far as I can what happened. I came back by the train that same afternoon when you said you were coming, and you were not there. I hung about hoping to meet you. Then I saw our two old friends in the Terrace—and they told me that there were other plans—that the doctor was very kind to your father for your sake, and that you were likely——”
Katherine waved her hand with great vivacity; she stamped her foot slightly on the ground. What had this to do with it? It was not her conduct that was in dispute, but his. Her meaning was so clear in her face without words that he stopped as she desired.
“I went back to India very much cast down. I was without hope. I was at a lonely station and very dreary. I tried to say the other day how strongly I believed in my heart that it was better to hold for the best, even if you could never attain it, than to try to get a kind of makeshift happiness with a second best.”
“Mr. Stanford,” cried Katherine, with her head thrown back and her eyes glowing, “from anything I can discern you are about to speak of a lady of whom I know nothing; who is dead—which sums up everything; and whom no one should dare to name, you above all, but with the most devout respect.”
He looked at her surprised, and then bowed his head. “You are right, Miss Katherine,” he said; “my poor little wife, it would ill become me to speak of her with any other feeling. I told you that I had much to tell you which could not be said——”
“Let it remain so then,” she cried with a tremble of excitement; “why should it be discussed between you and me? It is no concern of mine.”
“It’s a great, a very great concern of mine. Katherine, I must speak; this is the first time in which I have ever been able to speak to you, to tell you what has been in my heart—oh, not to-day nor yesterday—for ten long years.” She interrupted him again with the impatient gesture, the same slight stamp on the ground. “Am I to have no hearing,” he cried, “not even to be allowed to tell you, the first and only time that I have had the chance?”
Katherine cleared her throat a great many times before she spoke. “I will tell you how it looks from my point of view,” she said. “I used to come out here many a time after you went away first, when we were told that papa had sent you away. I was grateful to you. I thought it was very, very fine of you to prefer me to Stella; afterwards I began to think of you a little for yourself. The time we met made you a great deal more real to me. It was imagination, but I thought of you often and often when I came out here and walked about and looked at the view. The view almost meant you—it was very vague, but it made me happy, and I came out nearly every night. That is nearly ten years since, too; it was nothing, and yet it was the chief I had to keep my life going upon. Finally you come back, and the first thing you have to say to me is to explain that, though you like me still and all that, you have been married, you have had a child, and another life between whiles. Oh, no, no, Mr. Stanford, that cannot be.”
“Katherine! must I not say a word in my own defence?”