“How right he was! Oh, how right he was! But how merciless!” she thought, as she looked through the panes of the oriel window of her chamber out on to the white and silent park. She saw the huge old oaks, the grand old views, the distant mere frozen over, the deer crossing the snow in the distance to be fed. The bells of a church unseen were chiming musically. In the ivy beneath her windows two robins were singing in friendly rivalry. Above-head was a pale soft sky of faintest blue. In the air there was frost. It was all charming, homelike, stately, simple; it would have delighted her if—if—if—there was so many “ifs” she felt sick and weary at the mere thought of them, and the innocent tranquillity of the scene jarred on all her nerves with pain.
It was late in the morning before she could summon strength to go downstairs, where she found her mother lunching alone in the Tudor dining-hall; her father had gone away early in a sledge to attend political meetings in an adjacent county, and the large house-party invited was not due for two weeks.
“Who are coming, mother?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, I never know; I scarce know who they are when I see ’em,” replied the present mistress of Vale Royal. “Lady Kenilworth has arranged it all. She brings her friends.”
Katherine colored at the name.
“As she would go to the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo, or the Sanatorium at Hot Springs!” she said bitterly.
“Well, I don’t know about that. She’d have to pay for ’em in those places,” said Mrs. Massarene seriously, not intending any sarcasm.
“Don’t you eat nothing, my dear?” asked her mother anxiously. “I can’t say as India have made you fat, Kathleen.”
She smiled involuntarily.
“Surely you do not wish me to be fat, mother?”