“Oh, no; not at all. It's just a hold-up.”
The Senator was saying rather more than he meant to, and he was glad that the telephone bell broke off the conversation at this point. He excused himself abruptly and went to have a talk with the Governor.
Katherine walked to a window and stood staring out with unseeing eyes. At last she turned to a man who stood near her and said:—
“I don't believe it's going to rain any more. Will you have them bring up my trap, please?”
CHAPTER XVI. — McNALLY's EXPEDIENT
Katherine's casual acquaintances thought of her as a cool, unemotional young woman, and when asked for their estimate of her would give it with confidence that it was accurate. The few who knew her better were less sure what they thought of her, and there was considerable diversity in their opinions. She had a strong will and plenty of confidence in it. Until she had found herself standing between Harvey West and her father, she never had the least doubt that in any situation she would be able to do what she wanted. But without knowing it she liked to let her impulses direct her, and her confidence that her will could, if necessary, overrule them gave them freer play than they would have had in a weaker personality. She was keenly sensitive—and this she recognized—to the atmosphere of her immediate environment.
To-day the gray of the dripping sky and the sullen river and the pasty macadam road seemed to have got into her thoughts and to pervade everything. There was a feeling of eternity in the gathering twilight as though there had never been anything else and never would be. But she knew there had; it was only three days since she and Harvey had driven along this road. She recalled the glisten of the sunlight on the river, and the crimson of the hard maples stained by the first early frost, and she knew it was not the sunshine nor the tingle in the air nor the beautiful way in which Ned and Nick flew along stride for stride over the hard white road, but something else, something quite different, which had made her glad that Sunday morning. She looked straight ahead and tried to imagine that not the wooden English groom, but Harvey, sat beside her. Then realizing whither her imaginings were drifting, she pulled herself up sharply.
“You sentimental idiot!” she thought.