Part 23 (1/2)
”The pity of it! The pathos!” Odd pursued, not heeding her comment.
Hilda looked at him rather sadly.
”You mean that I should have lost my ignorance? Yes, that made me feel badly,” she a.s.sented. ”That is the worst of it. One becomes so suspicious. But, Mr. Odd, that is merely a sentimental regret. I have not lost my self-respect. I am not ignorant of things I should like to ignore; but one may know a great many things, and be unharmed.”
”My dear child, you are probably innocent of things familiar to many modern girls. No knowledge could harm you. You have a right to more than self-respect. You are a little heroine. Your unrewarded, unrecognized fight fills me with amazement and reverence. I did not know that such self-forgetful devotion existed.”
”Oh, please don't talk like that! It is quite ridiculous! We must have money, and I can make it easily. I would be quite a monster if I sat idly at home, and saw mamma in squalid misery. I merely do my duty.”
Hilda spoke quite sharply and decisively.
”Merely!” Odd e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
A thought of the near future, of Allan Hope, kept him silent, otherwise he might have indulged in reckless invective. He still held her hand, and again he raised it to his lips.
”That is a very stubborn and unconvinced salute, I am afraid,” Hilda said good-humoredly.
”May I come and get you now and then?” he asked.
”You think it would be wise?”
”How do you mean wise, Hilda?”
”I might be found out. I have given you my secret. You must help me to keep it.”
”I may speak of it to Katharine--since she knows?”
”Oh, of course, to Katherine. But don't _egg_ her on to worry me!”
laughed Hilda; ”and speak to her with _reservations_--there are things she must not know.”
Peter wondered if the child-friends.h.i.+p, the brotherly relations, ent.i.tled him to seal the compact with a kiss upon her lips. He looked at her with a sudden quickening of breath. Her dimly seen face was very beautiful. This realization of her beauty's attraction at that moment struck him with a sense of abas.e.m.e.nt before her. Surely no such poor tie held him to this lovely soul. And, at the turn of his own thoughts, Odd felt a vague stir of fear.
CHAPTER V
Odd was to take a walk in the Bois with Katherine the next morning, and he found her waiting for him in hat and coat and furs, a delightfully smart and wintry little figure. Katherine never failed in elegance, in well-groomed finish--her low-heeled little boots, her irreproachable snowy gloves, bore the same unmistakable stamp of the _cachet_ that costs, that is not to be procured ready made. Odd, as a rich man, had given very little thought to the power of money, and little thought to Katherine's garments except as charmingly characteristic symbols of good taste; but to-day his eye noted the black fur that fell about her shoulders and trailed l.u.s.trous ends to her very feet, more for its richness than its becomingness.
Her bright though slightly grave smile failed to restore him to his usual att.i.tude of _bon camaraderie_. He smiled and kissed her, but he was conscious of underlying soreness, conscious, too, that he might lose his temper with Katherine; he had never lost it with Alicia. Katherine's very superiority made it imperative to have things out with her. Kindly resignation was an impossibility. He realized that not to admire Katherine would make life with her intolerable. She would immediately perceive reservations and she would revolt against them. He wondered whether he should be the one to broach the subject of Hilda's ill-treatment, and was amazed at a certain embarra.s.sed shrinking, as from a feeling too deep for words, that kept him silent as they walked along, taking a short cut to the Place de l'Etoile, where the Arc stood in almost cardboard clearness on the pale cold sky. It was Katherine who spoke--
”Hilda told me of your kindness yesterday. It touched her very much.”
In some subtle way it irritated Odd to hear Katherine vouch for Hilda's feeling.
”And Hilda told you that I had been admitted into the mystery of the Archinard family?” His voice was even enough, but it held a certain keenness that Katherine was quick to recognize.
”You don't think their mystery creditable, do you? Nor do I, Peter. But mamma knows nothing of it, nor papa; and I have tried to dissuade Hilda from the first.”
”My dear Katherine, the child has worked like a galley-slave for you all! Your necessities were more potent facts than your dissuasions, I fancy!”
Katherine gave a look at the fine severity of the profile beside her.
She felt herself arraigned, and her impulse was towards rebellion.