The house was quite silent. He had told Bronson that he would put out the lights in the smoking-room when they left. No one was about and not a breath of wind stirred a tree outside.

He sat there for some minutes--and then his heart began to beat violently.

Whose was that soft footfall directly overhead? With the departure of the grandchildren from the old nurseries there was no one left in the wing but Katherine Bush!

All sorts of visions came to him; she had not yet gone to bed--perhaps she, too, was waiting for the New Year?

He got up and listened, his pulses bounding so that he seemed to hear his heart thumping against his side.

There was the sound again!

It was not to be endured. Fierce emotion shook him, and at last all restraint fell from him, and pa.s.sion became lord.

Then he extinguished the lights and softly crept up the stairs.

CHAPTER XVIII

Katherine had that instant removed her dressing-gown after the brushing of her hair, which now hung in two long plaits. She was in the act of slipping into bed. The carpet in the pa.s.sage was thick, and she heard no sounds, so that the first thing which startled her was the actual opening of the door of her room, which it had not been her custom to lock.

For one second a blind terror shook her, and then all her nerve and resource returned. She stood there magnificent in her anger and resentment. She had no female instinct instantly to seize the dressing-gown to cover herself. She stood straight up in her cheap nainsook nightgown, all the beautiful lines of her tall, slender figure showing in the soft shaded light.

Gerard Strobridge was like a man drunk with wine. His eye flamed and he trembled with excitement. The bed, a small old wooden one, was between them with a writing-table at the foot. So that to reach her he must go round by the fire.

This he did, while he whispered hoa.r.s.ely:

"Katherine--I love you--madly--I had to come to you, darling girl!" Then he stopped within a few feet of her, literally sobered by the expression of her face. It showed not an atom of fear--rather the proud contempt of an empress ordering the death of a presuming slave.

She did not speak for a moment; she seemed to draw up to her full height, and even to grow taller; she was only an inch or two less than himself. And if the scorn of eyes could kill, he would have lain there dead.

"Darling!" he cried, and went forward to take her in his arms.

She stepped back only one step and spoke at last, her deep tones low.

"If you dare to touch me, I will kill you--I am not afraid of you, you know--You are only a beast, after all--and I am the man with the club."

"Beautiful fiend!"--but he hesitated--He was no coward, and cared not a jot for her threats, only his fastidiousness was a.s.sailed by the thought of a struggling, fighting woman in his embrace, when he had come there for--Love! It would be wiser, perhaps, to cajole her. He was too intoxicated with pa.s.sion to realise that it would also seem more dignified!

"Katherine, do not be so horribly unkind, darling girl! I love you wildly, I tell you, and I want you to be mine."

"What for?" She was perfectly calm still, and never moved from her place.

"That we may be happy, you sweet thing. I want to hold you in my arms and caress you, and make us both forget that there is anything else in the whole wide world but our own two selves!"

And exalted by this enchanting picture, he drew a little closer and held out his hands.

"I tell you plainly--if you come one step nearer to me, you do so at your own risk. I will tear the flesh from your face with my nails, and strangle you." Her voice was absolutely deadly in its icy intentness. "I am not weak, and I despise your mean action in coming here to-night too greatly to have any fear."

The breeding in him responded to this sting.

"My mean action--!" but his voice faltered a little, and she interrupted him before he could argue further.

"Yes--I am a dependent in your aunt's house here, earning my living, and you chance my being disgraced and sent away for your own shamefully selfish ends. Indeed, you are teaching me the lesson of the depth to which an aristocrat can sink."

He drew back, and some of the fire died out of him. Her words cut him like a knife, but he was too overwrought with emotion yet to give in and leave her.

"Katherine--my darlings--forgive me!" he cried, brokenly. "I admit I am mad with love, but you shall never suffer for it--give yourself to me, and I will take you away from all drudgery. You shall have a house where you like. I will protect you and teach you all you desire to know. You shall lead an intellectual life worthy of your brain. We can travel in Italy and France, and I shall worship and adore you--Katherine, my sweet!"

The tones of his cultivated voice vibrated with deep feeling, and he looked all that was attractive as he stood there in his faultless evening clothes, pleading to her as though he were but a humble suppliant for grace, and she a queen.

But Katherine was not in the least touched, although her awakened critical faculties realised fully the agreeable companion he would probably make as a lover, with his knowledge of the world, and his polished homage to women. There was something fierce and savagely primitive at this moment in her faithfulness to Algy. For all the strongly sensuous side of her nature, any other man's caresses appeared revolting to her. It was _the man_, not _men_, who could arouse her pa.s.sionate sensibility.

"You ask me to be your mistress, then--is that it?" her voice was coldly level, like one discussing a business proposition.

His whole face lit up again--there was hope perhaps after all.

"Of course, darling--What else?"

"It is an insult--but I am not concerned with that point. My views are perhaps not orthodox. I am merely interested in my side of the affair, which is that I have not the slightest wish for the post. I will be no man's mistress--do you hear?"

"Katherine, can I not make you love me, sweet?"

She laughed softly. It was a dangerous sound, ominous as that which a lioness might make when she purrs.

"Not if you stayed on your knees for a thousand years! I have loved one man in my life with the kind of love which you desire--I know exactly what it means, and probably I shall never love another in that way--I sacrificed him for my idea. I had will enough to leave him, feeling for him what perhaps you feel for me. So do you think, then, that you could move me in the least!--You whom I do not love, but--despise!"

All this time, she stood there utterly desirable in her thin raiment, which she had never sought to cover. Indeed, now that she saw that she was going to win the game, she took joy that he should understand what he had lost, so that his punishment should be the more complete: there was nothing pitiful or tender about Katherine Bush. Her strange, strong character had no mercy for a man who had shown her that he was not master of himself--above all things, she admired self-control.

Gerard Strobridge suffered, as she spoke, as perhaps he had never done in his life before. If he had been one whit less of a gentleman, he would not now have conquered himself; he would have seized her in his arms, and made her pay for her scalding words. The effect of tradition for centuries, however, held him even beyond the mad longing which again thrilled through his blood as he looked at her.

He flung himself into the armchair and buried his head in his hands.

"My G.o.d!" he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, "how you can torture--can you not? I knew when I watched you in church that you could be cruel as the grave--but I thought to-day when you looked at me there in my aunt's sitting-room, that to me perhaps you meant to be kind; your face is the essence of pa.s.sion--it would deceive any man."

"Then it is well that you should be undeceived--and that we should understand one another. What did you think you would gain by coming here to-night?--My seduction? And some pleasure for yourself." She was horribly scornful again. "You never thought of me--It does not matter what my personal views are about such relations; you do not know them, and I do not believe that I have given you reason to think that you might treat me with want of respect; but your action shows that you do not respect me, I can only presume, because of my dependent position, and because you despise my cla.s.s--since you would certainly not have behaved so to any of your aunt's guests."

He writhed a little at her taunt, and his face was haggard now as he looked up at her.

"There is no use in my asking you to forgive me--but it is not true that I do not respect you, or that I have acted as I have for the reason that I despise your cla.s.s--That is a hateful thought. I came here to-night because I am a man--and was simply mad with longing for you after the tantalization of the last two days, and never being able to speak a word to you." His breath came rather fast, and he locked together his hands. "I love you--I would have come had you been the highest lady in the land. My action was not premeditated--it was yielding to a sudden strong temptation because I was sitting there in the smoking-room thinking of you, and I heard the noise of your soft footfall overhead, and suddenly all the furious pa.s.sion in me would no longer be denied and cried out for you!"

He rose and came over to her, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, he held out his arms to her in supplication. "It swept away all the civilisation in me. Nature breaks asunder all barriers in the best of us at times--and you are so adorably dear--Katherine--darling--I have done this thing, and now it is too late for me to plead for your pardon--but I love you more wildly than I have ever loved a woman in my life.--You could make me your slave, Katherine, if you would only give yourself to me. I would chase away the memory of that other and teach you all the divine things of love there are to learn in life."

She moved and stood by the fireplace. She was shivering a little, half from cold.

"I forbid you to say another word on this subject," she said gravely, but with less of her former scorn. "Neither you nor any other man could rob me of the memory of my once dear lover--but I would rather not hate you--so I appeal to that part of you that I still think is a gentleman to go at once out of my room."