“Perhaps it is not,” Katherine said. “I have had a great deal to think of,” she added with a half appeal for sympathy.
“I dare say. Is it possible that you never expected it? Didn’t you see that night? All those jewels even might have told their story. I confess that I was vaguely in a great fright; but I thought you must have been in her confidence, Katherine, that is the truth.”
“I in her confidence! Did you think I would have helped her to—to—deceive everybody—to—give such a blow to papa?”
“Is it such a blow to your papa? I am told he has not suffered in health. Now I look at you again you are pale, but I don’t suppose you have suffered in health either. Katherine, don’t you think you are overdoing it a little? She has done nothing that is so very criminal. And your own conduct was a little strange. You let her run off into the dark shrubberies to say farewell to him, as I am told, and never gave any alarm till you saw the yacht out in the bay, and must have known they were safe from any pursuit. I must say that a girl who has behaved like that is much more likely to have known all about it than an outsider like me!”
“I did not know anything about it,” cried Katherine—“nothing! Stella did not confide in me. If she had done so—if she had told me——”
“Yes; what would you have done then?” Lady Jane asked with a certain air of triumph.
Katherine looked blankly at her. She was wandering about in worlds not realised. She had never asked herself that question. And yet perhaps her own conduct, her patience in that moonlight scene was more extraordinary in her ignorance than it would have been had she sympathised and known. The question took her breath away, and she had no answer to give.
“If she had told you that she had been married to Charlie Somers that morning; that he was starting for India next day; that whatever her duty to her father and yourself might have been (that’s nonsense; a girl has no duty to her sister), her duty to her husband came first then. If she had told you that at the last moment, Katherine, what would you have done?”
Katherine felt every possibility of reply taken from her. What could she have done? Supposing Stella that night—that night in the moonlight, which somehow seemed mixed up with everything—had whispered that in her ear, instead of the lie about wishing to bid Charlie farewell. What could she have done; what would she have done? With a gasp in her throat she looked helplessly at her questioner. She had no answer to make.
“Then how could you blame me?” cried Lady Jane, throwing off her wonderful furs, loosening her mantle, beginning, with her dress tucked up a little in front, to look more like herself. “What was to be done when they had gone and taken it into their own hands? You can’t separate husband and wife, though, Heaven knows, there are a great many that would be too thankful if you could. But there they were—married. What was to be done? I made sure when you would insist on driving home with her, Katherine, that she must have told you.”