Kitty said not a word. The sick girl was awaiting with intense impatience the moment that should see the man whom she idolized as her physician happy once more. How if Flora did not come,—if Henriette should learn at last that the false love had put an end, with her own hand, to what she said had been a long torture to her? "Then you will never mention our names again," Henriette had wailed to Bruck in her delirium of the previous day. The chaos of yesterday still reigned in Kitty’s mind. Her conception of moral law was distinct and clear; she was still inexperienced enough to believe that rewards and punishments are just consequences of individual action; and here, in this strangely perverted world, she found it was eagerly desired that falsehood, treachery, and a systematic denial of duty should not only go unpunished, but should even be rewarded by rare good fortune. All pains were taken to breathe no syllable of the wrong done; the criminal must be petted, and thanked most humbly for a conversion which, if it really should occur, would not be the result of repentance, but the effect of a change of outward circumstances. And he whom she had so trampled beneath her feet,—would he take her instantly to his heart again if she condescended to return? Of course; he had never released her, even when she told him that she hated him, And Kitty glowed with indignation at the thought of the pitiable weakness which could induce a man to play so unmanly a part. She would have liked to drown in a passion of tears this knowledge which for a moment darkened all life, even the glorious sunny world of nature; but she suppressed all expression of the strange, sharp pain, and sat still, apparently more "cold-blooded" than ever. Weep? What was the whole miserable story to her? She had nothing to do with it, and nothing further to think about it, except with regard to some wedding-present for her sister, some costly piece of embroidery, which she must begin immediately if the marriage were to take place at Whitsuntide.
The dean’s widow came in to lay a branch of budding syringa upon the invalid’s coverlet as a greeting from the golden spring that was flinging abroad all sweet odours and the songs of birds upon its health-giving breezes. She insisted upon resuming her place by the bed, declaring that Kitty was not needed there at present, but must go out into the garden and breathe the fresh, sunny air; she surely needed it, for her face still showed traces of yesterday’s agitation.