Hilda drove home, with Palamon leaning his warm body against her feet as
he sat on the floor of the cab. She put out her hand now and then and
laid it on his head, but absently. She leaned back presently and closed
her eyes, only rousing herself with a little start when the cab drew up
with a jerk in the Rue Pierre Charron. Palamon stood dully on the
pavement while she spoke to the cabman--but the _monsieur_ had paid him,
as Hilda had forgotten for the moment. Palamon was evidently tired too,
and with a little turn of dread she wondered if the time would come when
she must leave Palamon to a lonely day in the apartment. Mrs. Archinard
did not like dogs near her. Katherine was always out, and although
Rosalie the cook was devoted to the _tou-tou_, Hilda would miss him
terribly and he would miss her.
She said to herself that if it came to that she would allow herself a
daily cab-fare rather than leave Palamon, and she toiled up the steep
stairs carrying him. Taylor opened the door to her.
"Give me the dog, Miss Hilda; you do look that tired. You are to go at
once into the drawing-room, Miss. Lord Allan Hope has been waiting for
some time."
Hilda was surprised to find that she had been thinking of Palamon
rather than of the ordeal before her. She felt calm now, perfectly, as
she walked into the drawing-room, a little taken aback, however, to find
Lord Allan there waiting for her and alone.
Katherine was in the next room, her own pretty room, a rather perplexed
smile of expectancy on her face. Taylor brought in Palamon, and
Katherine gave him a drink and patted him kindly. Palamon would go with
Hilda to her new home--dear old Palamon! The thought of Hilda's new home
and homes--of the castle in Somersetshire and the shooting-lodge in
Scotland, and the big house in Grosvenor Square, deepened the look of
perplexity on Katherine's brow.
While Palamon lapped the water, she watched him with an expression of
absent-minded concentration. She could hear nothing in the drawing-room,
except now and then the slightly raised quiet of Allan Hope's fine
voice. Presently there was a long silence, and Katherine paused near the
door.
The quizzical lift of her eyebrows spoke her amused inquiry. She could
hardly imagine Hilda allowing herself to be kissed, and as the silence
continued, Katherine felt a touch of impatience color her sisterly
sympathy. Lord Allan's voice, pitched on a deep note of pain, startled
her. There followed quite a burst of ardent eloquence. With a little
_moue_ of self-disapproval Katherine bent her ear to the door. She heard
Lord Allan quite distinctly. He was pleading in more desperate accents
than she could have imagined possible from him, and Katherine caught,
too, the half frightened reiteration of Hilda's voice: "I can't, I
can't; really I can't. I am so--_so_ sorry, so sorry--" The
childishness of this helpless repetition brought a quick frown to
Katherine's brow.
"Little idiot! Baby!"
She straightened herself and stood staring at the gray houses across the
way. Then, at renewed silence in the drawing-room, she walked to the
mirror and looked at her amethyst-robed reflection.
Her eyes lingered on the contour of her waist, the supple elegance of
the line that fell gleaming from her hip. She met the half-shamed,
half-daring glance of her deeply set eyes. The silence continued, and
Katherine walked out through the entrance and into the drawing-room.
Hilda was sitting upright on a tall chair, looking at the floor with an
expression of painful endurance, and Lord Allan stood looking at her.
He turned his eyes almost unseeingly on Katherine and remained silent,
while Hilda rose and put out her hand to him. Hilda had no variety of
metaphor; "I am so sorry," she repeated.
She left her hand in his for one moment and then passed swiftly out of
the room. Katherine was left facing the unfortunate lover. Katherine
showed great tact.
"Lord Allan, don't mind me. Sit down for a moment. Perhaps then you may
be able to tell me. Perhaps I can help you."
"No good, Miss Archinard; it's all up with me."
Her gentle voice evidently turned aside the current of his frank
despair. Instead of rushing out, he dropped on the sofa and looked at
the carpet over his locked hands.
"I am not going to talk to you for a little while."
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 gratitude. "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 recumbency of
attitude, "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 butter. 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
gratitude. 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.