"What are you thinking of?" asked Bedford's voice in her ear. So near
the voice sounded, so low and gentle, that it was almost like the voice
of her own heart, but for all its softness it held an insistence which
compelled an answer. Katrine made a gallant effort at confession.
"I was thinking of the man to whom I am--engaged."
"Virtually engaged!" corrected Bedford quietly. "But they were sad
thoughts to judge by your face. Why should you have sad thoughts of a
good man? It would hurt him to have you think of him so, for of a
certainty his chief thought is for your happiness. Shall we dismiss him
for the moment?--It's lonely for me here by myself, when you wander away
into dreams, and you look so wraith-like and unreal,--a typical spirit
of the mist. If I were an artist I should like to paint you now. I
wonder if you realise how beautiful you are?"
A glow lighted Katrine's eyes; the glow which warms the heart of every
true daughter of Eve who hears herself called fair.
"Am I? I'm glad! I--I think I've grown nicer lately," she replied
ingenuously. "At home no one admired me much; not half, not a quarter
as much as they did Grizel, who is really hardly pretty at all. She
used to laugh at me in the old days and say that I kept my good looks a
secret, while she took people by the throat, and bullied them into
admiration, but the last time she came down she said--?"
"Yes?"
"She said I had grown `unnecessarily good looking!' and wanted to know
`_Why_?' I knew!"