Part 25 (2/2)
The lamps were lighted and the tea-things all in readiness on the little table. Katherine lit the kettle and turned a log on the fire. Lord Allan's silence implied a dull acquiescence. He did not move until Katherine came and sat down on the chair beside him.
”_I_ am so sorry, too,” she said, with a sad little smile. ”Lord Allan, I thought she cared for you.”
”I hoped so.”
”And have you no more hope?”
”None--absolutely none. I tell you it's rough on a fellow, Miss Archinard. I--I _adore_ that child.”
”Poor Lord Allan,” Katherine gently breathed. She stretched out her slim hand and laid it almost tenderly on his. Katherine was rather surprised at herself, and to herself her motives were rather confused. ”I should have liked you as a brother, Lord Allan.”
”You are awfully kind.” He lifted his dreary eyes and surveyed her absently, but with some grat.i.tude. ”I suppose I had best be going,” he added suddenly, as if struck by the anti-climax of his position.
”No, no; not unless you feel you must.” Katherine put out her hand again and detained his rising. ”I can't bear to think of you going out alone like that into the cold. Just wait. You are bruised. Get back your breath. I am not going to be tiresome.”
Lord Allan leaned back in the sofa with a long sigh, relapsing into the same half stunned silence, while Katherine moved about the tea-table, measuring out the tea from the caddy to the teapot, pouring on the boiling water, and pausing to wait for the tea to steep. Presently Lord Allan was startled by a proffered steaming cup.
”Will you?” she said. ”I made it for you. It is such a chilly evening.”
”Oh, how awfully kind of you,” he started from his crushed rec.u.mbency of att.i.tude, ”but you know I really _can't!_” But at the grieved gentleness of Katherine's eyes he took the cup. ”It is too awfully kind of you. I do feel abominably chilly.” He gulped down the tea, and gave a half shame-faced smile as she took the cup for replenishment.
”No, don't get up,” she urged, as he made an effort to collect his courtesy; ”let me wait on you,” and she returned with a discreetly tempting plate of the thinnest bread and b.u.t.ter. She sat down beside him again, looking into the fire with kind, sad eyes as she stirred her tea.
She asked him presently, in the same quietly gentle voice, some little question about the most recent debate in the House. Lord Allan had rather distinguished himself in that debate; it was on the crest of that wave of triumph that he had come to Hilda. From monosyllabic replies he was led on to a rather doleful recitation of his own prowess; it seemed that Katherine had followed it all in the newspapers, so tactfully intelligent were her comments. He found himself sipping his third cup of tea, enjoying in a dreary way the expounding of his favorite political theories to the quiet, purple-robed figure beside him. He remembered that Miss Archinard had always been interested in his career; she, of course, was the intellectual one, though Hilda's beauty sent a sharp stab of pain through him as he made the comparison; he appreciated now Miss Archinard's kindness and sympathy with a brotherly warmth of grat.i.tude. When he at last rose to go, he was dejected; but no longer the crushed individual of an hour before.
”You have been too good to a beaten man,” he said, taking her hand.
”Oh, Lord Allan, by the laws of compensation you must lose _sometimes_.
Hilda, poor child, doesn't know what she has done; she cannot know. Her little achievements bound the world for her. She doesn't see outside her studio walls. _Your_ great world of action, true beneficent action, would stun her. Do you leave Paris directly, Lord Allan? Yes! Then won't you write to me now and then? I am interested in you. I won't relinquish the claim of 'it might have been.' May I keep in touch with you--as a sister would?”
”You are too good, Miss Archinard.”
”To an old friend? A man I have followed and admired as I have you? Lord Allan, I respect you from the bottom of my heart for the way in which you have borne this knock-down from fate. You are strong, it won't hurt you in the end. Let me know how you get on.”
Katherine's eyes were compelling in their candid kindness. Lord Allan said that he would, with emphasis. As he went down the long staircase, the purple-robed figure filled his thoughts with a reviving beneficence. He felt that the blow was perhaps not so bad as he had imagined--might even be for the best; better for him, for his career.
Katherine's words enveloped him in an atmosphere that was soothing.
Left alone, Katherine finished her second cup of tea, and made, as she looked thoughtfully into the fire, a second little _moue_ of self-disapprobation.
CHAPTER VII
Odd, as usual, found Katherine in the drawing-room when he called next morning. The Captain and Mrs. Archinard had a.s.sumed almost the aspect of illusions of late; for the regularity of his daily routine--the morning spent with Katherine, and the afternoon with Hilda--excluded the hours of their appearance, and Odd was rather glad of the discovered immunity.
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