“My letters!--oh, you wicked miserable woman, it is you who have made me so unhappy! My letters! what do you know of them?” cried Kate.
“Lord, Miss!” said Parsons in dismay, backing before her. And then she began to cry. “I thought as you’d rather I brought ’em up-stairs. You weren’t in the drawing-room, nor nowhere to be seen. I meant it for the best,” cried Parsons, backing to the wall with such a terror of the clenched hand as was quite out of proportion to the powers of that little weapon of offence.
“Give them to me,” cried Kate; “draw up the blinds--make haste and throw this wet thing away. My letters, my letters!--oh, if you only knew what harm you have done! Give them to me----”
She sat down on the sofa under the window, which, after being veiled so carefully, now poured in upon her all the light of the full sunshiny October day. There was a note from Madeline Winton, a notification about millinery from Camelford, something else equally unimportant, and the letter from John, which she ought to have had three hours ago. She paused as she took it up, and turned to Parsons, who was still fluttering about the room in her alarm: “Go away,” said Kate, solemnly; “you can say I have a headache and am lying down; and, please, don’t come near me any more to-day.”
“Let me come and dress you, Miss, as usual. Oh, goodness gracious me! as if I meant any harm.”
“You need not stop to cry,” said Kate, severely; “but go away. You wicked woman! I owe all my trouble to you.”
And then as soon as she was alone she read John’s letter--the letter he had written in his desolate room before he left Camelford. It went to Kate’s heart. She read it and she cried, and she kissed the insensible paper, and her load seemed lifted off her mind. She had been miserable half an hour ago, and now she was happy. It was such an answer to all her questionings as nothing else could have given. She cried, and the colour came back to her cheek and the light to her eyes. “I am not the bank,” she said to herself, with a return of her old levity. “It is not me he means to give up; he must never, never give up me.” And then she kissed the letter again. She had never done such a thing all her life; but she did it now without stopping to think, and she read over the end of it, “yours, and only yours, whatever may happen,” with a gush of warmth and gladness at her heart. “Dear John! poor John! he is so fond of me. Why is he so fond of me?” she said to herself with sweet tears. And then all at once it struck her as with a great chill that there was more than mere fondness in this letter of John’s. “If you should ever want me.” “This may pass over and be to you as if it had never been.” How could that be? Was not he hers and she his as of old?