“Try to be comforted, Kitty; I’m sure you will see her again.”
His conscience reproached him as he held out that false hope. It could never be! The one unpardonable sin, in the judgment of fallible human creatures like herself, was the sin that Sydney Westerfield had committed. Is there something wrong in human nature? or something wrong in human laws? All that is best and noblest in us feels the influence of love—and the rules of society declare that an accident of position shall decide whether love is a virtue or a crime.
These thoughts were in the lawyer’s mind. They troubled him and disheartened him: it was a relief rather than an interruption when he felt Kitty’s hand on his arm. She had dried her tears, with a child’s happy facility in passing from one emotion to another, and was now astonished and interested by a marked change in the weather.
“Look for the lake!” she cried. “You can’t see it.”
A dense white fog was closing round them. Its stealthy advance over the water had already begun to hide the boathouse at the end of the pier from view. The raw cold of the atmosphere made the child shiver. As Mr. Sarrazin took her hand to lead her indoors, he turned and looked back at the faint outline of the boathouse, disappearing in the fog. Kitty wondered. “Do you see anything?” she asked.
He answered that there was nothing to see, in the absent tone of a man busy with his own thoughts. They took the garden path which led to the cottage. As they reached the door he roused himself, and looked round again in the direction of the invisible lake.
“Was the boat-house of any use now,” he inquired—"was there a boat in it, for instance?” “There was a capital boat, fit to go anywhere.” “And a man to manage it?” “To be sure! the gardener was the man; he had been a sailor once; and he knew the lake as well as—” Kitty stopped, at a loss for a comparison. “As well as you know your multiplication table?” said Mr. Sarrazin, dropping his serious questions on a sudden. Kitty shook her head. “Much better,” she honestly acknowledged.
Opening the breakfast-room door they saw Mrs. Presty making coffee. Kitty at once retired. When she had been fishing, her grandmamma inculcated habits of order by directing her to take the rods to pieces, and to put them away in their cases in the lumber-room. While she was absent, Mr. Sarrazin profited by the opportunity, and asked if Mrs. Linley had thought it over in the night, and had decided on applying for a Divorce.
“I know nothing about my daughter,” Mrs. Presty answered, “except that she had a bad night. Thinking, no doubt, over your advice,” the old lady added with a mischievous smile.
“Will you kindly inquire if Mrs. Linley has made up her mind yet?” the lawyer ventured to say.