Katherine was silent; the momentary color had faded out of her face; her gaze followed the grimy canvas of the collier as it sailed slowly to westward.
“Well, I’m sorry,” said her friend, as he patted his skye-terrier. “He’s a good man, and I should like to know you were in the hands of a good man, my dear. You will have all the royal and noble blackguards in Europe after you, and you have nobody I think to advise you, except your lawyers, who are all very well in their way, but——”
Katherine smiled a little, rather scornfully.
“The royal and noble people cannot marry me by force, and I should suppose they will understand a plain ‘No’ if they don’t often hear one. Besides, if I do what I meditate I shall soon lose all attraction for them.”
“Good Lord, what’s that? You alarm me. I remember you expressed very revolutionary ideas in India.”
“I will tell you after dinner. You will dine with us, won’t you, and stay a day or two?”
“I will dine with pleasure, and sleep the night. But I must be back in town by the first morning train. I have to go down to Windsor at noon. What on earth can you be thinking of doing? Buying a kingdom in the South Seas, or finishing the Panama?”
“Something that you will perhaps think quite as eccentric. Let us talk of other things. The day is a real English day to welcome you, so dim, so sad, so still; the weather you sigh for in India.”
“Yes,” said Framlingham, falling in with her mood. “One thinks of Lytton’s verses:
“‘Wandering lonely, over seas,