“That kind of epigram can be made like match-boxes at twopence farthing a gross,” said Raine, impatiently. “You have only to dress up an old adage with a mask of spite.”
“You haven't changed,” she said with a smile. “You are just the same as when you left.”
“More so,” he said, enigmatically. “Much more so. Then I thought it would do you good to cry. Now I wish you would. I suppose it seems odd I should say this to you. You must forgive me.”
“But why should I cry when I have no trouble?” she asked, disregarding his apology. “Besides, I don't go about bewailing my lot in life. Do you think I am unhappy?”
“Yes,” he replied, bluntly, “I do. I'll tell you what made me first think so. It was at the theatre at Christmas, when we saw 'Denise.' I was watching your face in repose.”
“It is a painful play,” she said, quietly, but her lip quivered a little, and a faint flush came into her cheek. “Besides, I was very happy that evening.”
He was sitting sideways on the bench, watching her with some earnestness. She was drawing scrawls on the gravel with the point of her parasol. Both started when they heard a harsh voice addressing them.
“Ach! You are here. Is it not a beautiful afternoon?”
It was Frau Schultz who spoke. Felicia was by her side. Raine rose to his feet, took off his hat, and uttered a pleasant commonplace of greeting. But Frau Schultz put her hand on Felicia's arm and moved away.
“We will not detain you. I am going to the dentist, and Miss Graves is accompanying me.”
So Raine lifted his hat again and resumed his seat.
“That is rough on Miss Graves,” he said, watching their retiring figures and noting the contrast between the girl's slim waist and the elder woman's broad, red and mauve spotted back. “But she is a sweet-natured girl. Isn't she?”
“Yes,” assented Katherine. “He will be a happy man who wins her.”
“You are right there,” he replied in his downright way, unconscious of the questioning pain that lay behind the woman's calm grey eyes. “Few people, I should think, could know her without loving her. Life is touching to see the relations between herself and my father.”
“You will see a great deal of her, for that reason.”
Again Katherine kept down the question that struggled to leap into her eyes. There was a short silence, during which she turned idly over the leaves of the book that was in her lap. It was “Diana of the Crossways.”