nk within his arms and confessed her love.

CHAPTER XXXII

Nobody asked Katharine any questions next day. If cross-examined she
might have said that nobody spoke to her. She worked a little, wrote a
little, ordered the dinner, and sat, for longer than she knew, with
her head on her hand piercing whatever lay before her, whether it was
a letter or a dictionary, as if it were a film upon the deep prospects
that revealed themselves to her kindling and brooding eyes. She rose
once, and going to the bookcase, took out her father's Greek dictionary
and spread the sacred pages of symbols and figures before her. She
smoothed the sheets with a mixture of affectionate amusement and hope.
Would other eyes look on them with her one day? The thought, long
intolerable, was now just bearable.

She was quite unaware of the anxiety with which her movements were
watched and her expression scanned. Cassandra was careful not to be
caught looking at her, and their conversation was so prosaic that were
it not for certain jolts and jerks between the sentences, as if the mind
were kept with difficulty to the rails, Mrs. Milvain herself could have
detected nothing of a suspicious nature in what she overheard.

William, when he came in late that afternoon and found Cassandra alone,
had a very serious piece of news to impart. He had just passed Katharine
in the street and she had failed to recognize him.

"That doesn't matter with me, of course, but suppose it happened with
somebody else? What would they think? They would suspect something
merely from her expression. She looked--she looked"--he hesitated--"like
some one walking in her sleep."

To Cassandra the significant thing was that Katharine had gone out
without telling her, and she interpreted this to mean that she had gone
out to meet Ralph Denham. But to her surprise William drew no comfort
from this probability.

"Once throw conventions aside," he began, "once do the things that
people don't do--" and the fact that you are going to meet a young man
is no longer proof of anything, except, indeed, that people will talk.

Cassandra saw, not without a pang of jealousy, that he was extremely
solicitous that people should not talk about Katharine, as if his
interest in her were still proprietary rather than friendly. As they
were both ignorant of Ralph's visit the night before they had not
that reason to comfort themselves with the thought that matters were
hastening to a crisis.