He followed her to the fire almost overcome again by the picture she presented in her straight thin garment, virgin white and plain. He wildly desired to unplait that thick soft hair and bury his face in it--he longed to hold her to his heart. But he restrained himself.

There was complete silence for a second or two, and then across the park in the church tower, midnight pealed, tolling the dying year.

They both lifted their heads to listen, unconsciously counting the strokes, and then when the last one struck, and the joyous bells rang out, something in their sound melted the anger and contempt in Katherine's soul. She looked at him, his refined, distinguished face very pale and utterly dejected now. And the broad-minded, level-headed judgment which she brought to bear on all matters told her that she had no right to great anger and made her realise for the first time that she was actually to blame perhaps for this situation having developed since she had not sufficiently considered what might be the possible result of arresting a man's attention through the eyes and ears.

"Listen," she said gently, holding out her beautiful hand. "Here is the New Year--I do not want to begin it with any hard thoughts--After all, I understand you--and I forgive you. I believe I have been in some measure to blame. I cannot ever be your love--but I am very lonely--won't you be my true knight and friend?"

She had touched the deepest chord of his being. The tears sprang to his fine grey eyes; he knelt down upon the rug and bent and kissed her knees.

"Indeed, I will--I swear it, darling--And whatever suffering it brings to me, I will never make you regret your sweet forgiveness of me, and your resumed trust in me to-night."

She leaned forward, and for an instant smoothed his thick brown hair in blessing.

He took her hands and kissed the palms, and then without another word, he rose and went towards the door. There he turned and looked at her, standing in the firelight, the dark oak-panelled room only lit by the one small electric-shaded lamp by the bed. He looked and looked, as though his famished eyes must surfeit themselves with the vision. It was fair enough to see!

And then he noiselessly quitted the room and went on down the stairs to the smoking-room as silently as he had come.

CHAPTER XIX

The months went by. It was Easter time before Katherine Bush again saw Gerard Strobridge. He went off to Egypt about the middle of January, and Lady Garribardine was up in London for a few days alone before he left seeing her grandchildren off. Katherine missed him, and unconsciously his influence directed her studies. She remembered isolated sentences that he had used in their talk that day in the picture gallery. He had certainly shown a delightfully cultivated mind, and she wished that things had not reached a climax so soon between them. She regretted deeply that she had caused him any pain and determined never to deviate from loyal friendship so that he should have no cause to suffer further.

He had not forgotten about the books, and she was now the proud possessor of several volumes on the Renaissance, including, of course, Symonds and Pater. They opened yet another door in her imagination, and on days when she was not very busy, she would wander in the picture gallery and go over all the examples of the Italian masters again and again, and try to get the atmosphere of the books.

Lady Garribardine watched her silently for the first few weeks after her nephew went, without increasing their intimacy. Her shrewd mind was studying Katherine, to make sure that she had made no mistake about her.

Such a very deep creature might have sides which would make her regret having dropped the reserve which, accompanied by a high-handed kindliness, she showed to all her dependents.

The great event of New Year's day had been the advent of the grey wig so beautifully arranged with her ladyship's own snow-white hair, that the whole thing seemed growing together! With her dark, sparkling eyes and jet brows, she now looked an extremely handsome old lady; and Katherine who did not see her until the afternoon when they were alone, was unable to keep a faint, almost inaudible "Ah!" of admiration from escaping, when she first saw her. She was furious with herself and bit her lip, but Lady Garribardine smiled.

"You would say something, Miss Bush? Pray speak."

Katherine coloured a little; she felt this was one of those slips which she very seldom made, but frankness being always her method, she answered quietly:

"I only thought how beautiful Your Ladyship looked--just like the Nattier in the gallery."

"You find my grey locks an improvement, then?"

"Oh, yes!"

"The Nattier was an ancestress of mine.--A French entanglement of a great great-grandfather, which ended, as these affairs are seldom fortunate enough to do, in a marriage all correct with the church's blessing--the husband being most conveniently killed in a duel with another man!--So the then d'Estaire brought her here to Blissington, where she was shockingly bored, poor thing! and died a year or two after producing an heir for him. When I was young, I always went to fancy b.a.l.l.s as the charming creature--it is amusing that you see the likeness even now."

"It is very striking."

"I always felt a great pity for her--transplanted from Versailles and all the joys of the Court, to this quiet, English home--Have you ever read Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, girl?"

Katherine had not.

"Well, then, you had better read them; there is a good edition in the library. They are, you will find, the most instructive things in English literature. If I had had a son, I would have brought him up upon them. I was reminded of them now by thinking of my twice great-grandmother.

Chesterfield always quotes the French n.o.bles of that date as the _ne plus ultra_ of good breeding, and rather suggests that the Englishmen were often boors or blockheads. So although d'Estaire may have satisfied her, the general company could not have done so, one feels."

"I would like to see Versailles," Katherine ventured to remark.

"You will some day--I may go to Paris after Easter--one must have clothes."

Katherine realised this necessity--her own wardrobe would require replenishing by the springtime, but she had not dreamed of Paris.

Her immediate action after this was to get from the library the Chesterfield Letters, the reading of which she always afterwards looked back upon as being the second milestone in her career. She devoured them, and learned countless advantageous lessons of the world therefrom.

The first and chief being the value of graciousness and good manners.

She now began to realise that her own were too sullen and abrupt, and a marked change in them was soon perceivable to anyone who would have cared to notice. This was during the time when she was still only on probation in her employer's favour, but it was not lost upon that astute lady; nothing ever escaped her eagle eye. And she often smiled to herself quietly when she watched the girl.

Now and then they would go up to the London house for a few days and "picnic," as Her Ladyship called it, which meant taking only her personal footman to wait on her, and a maid or two for the house.

Katherine went with her nearly always, and was sent shopping and allowed to go and see her family, if she wished.

But she did not wish, and always met Matilda at some place for tea. The gulf between them was growing wider and wider, and while Katherine was far more agreeable than of old, Matilda stood in much greater awe of her.

She felt, although she would not have owned it for the world, that her sister had really gone into another cla.s.s, and she was not quite comfortable with her. Katherine seemed to look more stately and refined each time, and Matilda gloried and grieved in secret over it.

Gladys accompanied her on one occasion.

"I suppose Kitten will be marrying one of them gentlemen, some day,"

Matilda said on the way home to Laburnum Villa. "You'd never know she wasn't someone tip-top now, would you, Glad?"

"No--she is quite like any of our 'real thing' lot who came into Ermantine's--they're dowdy, but you'd know they were it."

"Well, I hope she'll be happy." Matilda sighed doubtfully.

"Yes, she will," Gladys returned a little bitterly. "Katherine would never do anything to get herself into a mess; she is quite just, and she can be awfully kind--but she looks to the end of things and doesn't care a rush for anyone but sticks to what she wants herself. I tell you what, Tild, I used to hate her--but I don't now--I respect Katherine. She is so perfectly true."

"She seems to talk different, don't you notice, Glad?"

"She always did--but now more than ever; she is like our best lot--I suppose she did learn something extra at those evening cla.s.ses she was so fond of?"

Matilda shook her head regretfully.

"I never did hold to them--she'd have been happy at home now and engaged to Charlie Prodgers all comfortable, but for that nonsense."

"Oh! but, Tild, I expect what she has got is better even than that."

"What! to be a grand lady's servant, Glad! My! I'd far rather be Mrs.

Prodgers, junior, a lady myself, and keep my own general! Mabel's forever saying Katherine can't be anything but a slave--And Mabel knows--her cousin's aunt's daughter who married that gentleman with the large city business was presented at Court!"

But Mrs. Bob Hartley only sighed. Life was growing particularly grim for her just now. She felt horribly ill, and had to stand about all day, and conceal every sensation to keep up the appearances that all was fair.

Katherine reflected deeply upon the moral of the situation, after her sisters had left her. What martyrs many women were in life! and what hideous injustice it all seemed--and more than ever she saw how merciless nature is to weaklings.

About three weeks before Easter, Lady Garribardine was alone down at Blissington; she had lately taken to having her secretary with her sometimes on her frequent visits to her cottagers.