He pushed her off furiously. “You—afraid!” Impossible to describe the scorn with which he repeated this word. “Is it—is it true?”
Katherine could make no reply, and he wanted none, for thereupon he burst into a roar of oaths and curses which beat down on her head like a hailstorm. She had never heard the like before, nor anything in the least resembling it. She tried to grasp at his hands, which he dashed into the air in his fury, right and left. She called out his name, pulled at his arm in the same vain effort. Then she sprang to her feet, crying out that she could not bear it—that it was a horror and a shame. Katherine’s cloak fell from her; she stood, a vision of white, with her uncovered shoulders and arms, confronting the old man, who, with his face distorted like that of a demoniac, sat volleying forth curses and imprecations. Katherine had never been so splendidly adorned as Stella, but a much smaller matter will make a girl look wonderful in all her whiteness shining, in the middle of the gloom against the background of heavy curtains and furniture, at such a moment of excitement and dismay. It startled the doctor as he came in, as with the effect of a scene in a play. And indeed he had a totally different impression of Katherine, who had always been kept a little in the shade of the brightness of Stella, from that day.
“Well,” he said, coming in, energetic but calm, into the midst of all this agitation, with a breath of healthful freshness out of the night, “what is the matter here? I have seen the woman, Miss Katherine, and she is really not hurt at all. If it had touched her eyes, though, it might have been bad enough. Hullo! the gun again—gone off of itself this time, eh? I hope you are not hurt—nor your father.”
“We are in great trouble,” said Katherine. “Papa has been very much excited. Oh, I am so glad—so glad you have come, doctor! Papa——”
“Eh? what’s the matter? Come, Mr. Tredgold, you must get into bed—not a burglar about, I assure you, and the man on the alert. What do you say? Oh, come, come, my friend, you mustn’t swear.”
To think he should treat as a jest that torrent of oaths that had made Katherine tremble and shrink more than anything else that had happened! It brought her, like a sharp prick, back to herself.
“Don’t speak to me, d—— you,” cried the old man. “D—— you all—d——”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “cursed be the whole concern, I know—and a great relief to your mind, I shouldn’t wonder. But now there’s been enough of that and you must get to bed.”
He made Katherine a sign to go away, and she was thankful beyond expression to do so, escaping into her own room, where there was a fire, and where the head housemaid, very serious, waited to help her to undress—“As Stevens, you are aware, Miss Katherine, ’as gone away.” The door of the other room was open, the gleam of firelight visible within. Oh, was it possible—was it possible that Stella was not there, that she was gone away without a sign, out on the breadths of the moonlit sea, from whence she might never come again? Katherine had not realised this part of the catastrophe till now. “I think I can manage by myself, Thompson,” she said faintly; “don’t let me keep you out of bed.”
“Oh, there’s no question of bed now for us, Miss,” said Thompson with emphasis; “it’s only an hour or two earlier than usual, that’s all. We’ll get the more forwarder with our work—if any one can work, with messengers coming and going, and news arriving, and all this trouble about Miss Stella. I’m sure, for one, I couldn’t close my eyes.”