thumb and
finger in the air to express her utter disdain for the man whom she chose
to cast off.

It seemed that Kate, in running away from her father's house and her
betrothed bridegroom, and breaking the laws of respectable society, had
with that act given over all attempt at any principle.

So she set herself down to write her letter, with a pout here and a dimple
there, and as much pretty gentleness as if she had been talking with her
own bewitching face and eyes quite near to his. She knew she could bewitch
him if she chose, and she was in the mood just now to choose very much,
for she was deeply angry with her husband.

She had ever been utterly heartless when she pleased, knowing that it
needed but her returning smile, sweet as a May morning, to bring her much
abused subjects fondly to her feet once more. It did not strike her that
this time she had sinned not only against her friends, but against heaven,
and God-given love, and that a time of reckoning must come to her,--had
come, indeed.

She had never believed they would be angry with her, her father least of
all. She had no thought they would do anything desperate. She had expected
the wedding would be put off indefinitely, that the servants would be sent
out hither and yon in hot haste to unbid the guests, upon some pretext of
accident or illness, and that it would be left to rest until the village
had ceased to wonder and her real marriage with Captain Leavenworth could
be announced.

She had counted upon David to stand up for her. She had not understood how
her father's righteous soul would be stirred to the depths of shame and
utter disgrace over her wanton action. Not that she would have been in the
least deterred from doing as she pleased had she understood, only that she
counted upon too great power with all of them.

When the letter was written it sounded quite pathetic and penitent,
putting all the blame of her action upon her husband, and making herself
out a poor, helpless, sweet thing, bewildered by so much love put upon
her, and suggesting, just in a hint, that perhaps after all she had made a
mistake not to have kept David's love instead of the wilder, fiercer one.
She ended by begging David to be her friend forever, and leaving an
impression with him, though it was but slight, that already shadows had
crossed her path that made her feel his friendship might be needed some
day.

It was a letter calculated to drive such a lover as David