第153章

"No. Nothing's been touched," said Katharine. "Everything's exactly the same." But as she said this, with a decision which seemed to make it imply that more than the sofa was unchanged, she held out a cup into which she had forgotten to pour any tea. Being told of her forgetfulness, she frowned with annoyance, and said that Cassandra was demoralizing her. The glance she cast upon them, and the resolute way in which she plunged them into speech, made William and Cassandra feel like children who had been caught prying. They followed her obediently, making conversation. Any one coming in might have judged them acquaintances met, perhaps, for the third time. If that were so, one must have concluded that the hostess suddenly bethought her of an engagement pressing for fulfilment. First Katharine looked at her watch, and then she asked William to tell her the right time. When told that it was ten minutes to five she rose at once, and said:

"Then I'm afraid I must go."

She left the room, holding her unfinished bread and butter in her hand. William glanced at Cassandra.

"Well, she IS queer!" Cassandra exclaimed.

William looked perturbed. He knew more of Katharine than Cassandra did, but even he could not tell--. In a second Katharine was back again dressed in outdoor things, still holding her bread and butter in her bare hand.

"If I'm late, don't wait for me," she said. "I shall have dined," and so saying, she left them.

"But she can't--" William exclaimed, as the door shut, "not without any gloves and bread and butter in her hand!" They ran to the window, and saw her walking rapidly along the street towards the City. Then she vanished.

"She must have gone to meet Mr. Denham," Cassandra exclaimed.

"Goodness knows!" William interjected.

The incident impressed them both as having something queer and ominous about it out of all proportion to its surface strangeness.

"It's the sort of way Aunt Maggie behaves," said Cassandra, as if in explanation.

William shook his head, and paced up and down the room looking extremely perturbed.

"This is what I've been foretelling," he burst out. "Once set the ordinary conventions aside--Thank Heaven Mrs. Hilbery is away. But there's Mr. Hilbery. How are we to explain it to him? I shall have to leave you.""But Uncle Trevor won't be back for hours, William!" Cassandra implored.

"You never can tell. He may be on his way already. Or suppose Mrs.

Milvain--your Aunt Celia--or Mrs. Cosham, or any other of your aunts or uncles should be shown in and find us alone together. You know what they're saying about us already."Cassandra was equally stricken by the sight of William's agitation, and appalled by the prospect of his desertion.

"We might hide," she exclaimed wildly, glancing at the curtain which separated the room with the relics.

"I refuse entirely to get under the table," said William sarcastically.

She saw that he was losing his temper with the difficulties of the situation. Her instinct told her that an appeal to his affection, at this moment, would be extremely ill-judged. She controlled herself, sat down, poured out a fresh cup of tea, and sipped it quietly. This natural action, arguing complete self-mastery, and showing her in one of those feminine attitudes which William found adorable, did more than any argument to compose his agitation. It appealed to his chivalry. He accepted a cup. Next she asked for a slice of cake. By the time the cake was eaten and the tea drunk the personal question had lapsed, and they were discussing poetry. Insensibly they turned from the question of dramatic poetry in general, to the particular example which reposed in William's pocket, and when the maid came in to clear away the tea-things, William had asked permission to read a short passage aloud, "unless it bored her?"Cassandra bent her head in silence, but she showed a little of what she felt in her eyes, and thus fortified, William felt confident that it would take more than Mrs. Milvain herself to rout him from his position. He read aloud.

Meanwhile Katharine walked rapidly along the street. If called upon to explain her impulsive action in leaving the tea-table, she could have traced it to no better cause than that William had glanced at Cassandra; Cassandra at William. Yet, because they had glanced, her position was impossible. If one forgot to pour out a cup of tea they rushed to the conclusion that she was engaged to Ralph Denham. She knew that in half an hour or so the door would open, and Ralph Denham would appear. She could not sit there and contemplate seeing him with William's and Cassandra's eyes upon them, judging their exact degree of intimacy, so that they might fix the wedding-day. She promptly decided that she would meet Ralph out of doors; she still had time to reach Lincoln's Inn Fields before he left his office. She hailed a cab, and bade it take her to a shop for selling maps which she remembered in Great Queen Street, since she hardly liked to be set down at his door. Arrived at the shop, she bought a large scale map of Norfolk, and thus provided, hurried into Lincoln's Inn Fields, and assured herself of the position of Messrs. Hoper and Grateley's office. The great gas chandeliers were alight in the office windows.

She conceived that he sat at an enormous table laden with papers beneath one of them in the front room with the three tall windows.