“Now it means a week or two,” he said; “not much, but still we can make a great deal out of it. And the first thing must be to look after your health, mother. This will never do.”
“My health will mend now,” she said, with a smile; and then, afraid to have been supposed to consent to the fact that her health had need of mending--“I mean I never was better, John. I am only a little--nervous--because of the surprise; the first thing is to make you enjoy your holiday, my own boy.”
“Yes,” he said, with a curious smile. Enjoy his holiday!--which was the escape of a man beaten from the field on which he had failed in his first encounter with fate. But I will not let her know that, John said to himself. And I must not show him that I see it, was the reflection of his mother. This was how they met again after the great parting which looked like the crisis of their lives.
Kate was very much perplexed by her interview with her lover, and by the abrupt conclusion of his visit. She was very sweet-tempered and good-natured, and could not bear to vex any one; but perhaps it pained her secretly a little to be brought in contact with those very strong feelings which she scarcely understood, and which did not bear much resemblance to her own tender, affectionate, caressing love. She was very fond of John; at bottom she knew and felt that of all the men she had ever seen, he was the man whom she preferred trusting her life and happiness to; and when opportunity served she was very willing to give him her smiles, her sweet words, to lean her head against him, caressing and dependent, to bestow even a soft unimpassioned kiss; but to think of nothing but John, to resign any part of her duties as mistress of the house, or to neglect other people, and make them uncomfortable, on account of him, would never have occurred to her, and there was in her mind at the same time something of that fatal curiosity which so often attends power. She wanted to know how far her power could go: it gave her a thrill of excitement to speculate upon just touching the utmost borders of it, coming to the verge of loss and despair, and then mending everything with a touch of her hand or sudden smile. By nature Kate seemed to have been so completely separated from all tragical possibilities. She had never wanted anything in all her life that had not been procured for her. Everything had given way to her, everything conspired to give her her will. And what if she should give herself one supreme pleasure to end with, and skirt the very edge of the abyss, and feel the awful thrill of danger, and go just within a hair’s-breadth of destruction? Kate’s heart beat as the thought occurred to her. If she could do this, then she might sip the very essence of tragedy, and never more be obliged to despise herself as ignorant of intense emotions--while yet she would still keep her own happiness all the time to fall back upon. Such was the thought--we cannot call it project--which gradually shaped itself in Kate’s mind, and which accident went so far to carry out.