The fact was, marriage to Kathryn was not a terminal, but a way station where one was obliged to change for another stretch on a pleasant and unhampered journey, and she had no intention of marrying a possible invalid or, perhaps, a dying man.
So while Northrup struggled out of his long and serious illness, Kathryn played her little game under cover. Some women, rather dull and stupid ones, can do this admirably if they are young enough and lovely enough to carry it through, and Kathryn was both. She had also that peculiar asset of looking divinely intuitive and sweet during her silences, and it would have taken a keen reader of human nature to decide whether Kathryn Morris's silences brooded over a rare storeroom of treasure or over a haunted and empty chamber.
Without any one being aware of the reasons for his reappearance, a certain Alexander Arnold materialized while Northrup had been at his worst. Sandy Arnold had figured rather vehemently in the year following Kathryn's "coming out," but had faded away when Northrup began to show signs of becoming famous.
Arnold was a man who made money and lost it in a breath-taking fashion, but gradually he was steadying himself and was more often up than down--he was decidedly up at the time of Northrup's darkest hour; he was still refusing to disappear when Northrup emerged from the shadows and showed signs of persisting. This was disconcerting. Kathryn faced a situation, and situations were never thrilling to her: she lacked the sporting spirit; she always played safe or endeavoured to. Sandy was still in evidence when Northrup disappeared from the scene.
Mrs. Northrup read Brace's letter to Kathryn, and something in the girl rose in alarm. This ignoring of her, for whatever reason, was most disturbing. Brace should have taken her, if not his mother, into his confidence. Instead he had "cut and run"--that was the way Kathryn _thought_ of it. Aloud she said, with that ravishing look of hers:
"How very Brace-like! Getting material and colour I suppose he calls it. I wish"--this with a tender, yearning smile--"I wish, for your sake and mine, dear, that his genius ran in another direction, stocks or banking--anything with an office. It is so worrying, this trick of his of hunting plots."