She was terrified at herself when she began to understand that something had overcome her which she felt powerless to resist. For she was a very religious woman, and the idea of envying her own daughter, and of almost hating her out of envy, was monstrous. When Ralston had come, she had not had the slightest intention of speaking as she had spoken. Suddenly the words had come to her lips of themselves, as it were. If things went on as they were going, Katharine would wait for Ralston during years to come--the girl had her father’s nature in that--and Katharine would be at home, and the cruel, hopeless comparison must go on, a perpetual and a keen torture from which there was to be no escape. It was simply impossible, intolerable, more than human endurance could bear. Ralston must be sent away, Katharine must be married as quickly as possible, and peace would come. There was no other way. It would be easy enough to marry the girl, with her position, and the hope of some of Robert Lauderdale’s money, and with her beauty--that terrible beauty of hers that was turning her mother’s to ugliness beside it. The first words had spoken themselves, the others had followed of necessity, and then, at the end, had come the overwhelming consciousness of what they had meant, and the breaking down of the overstrained nerves, and the sobs and the tears, gushing out as a spring where instant remorse had rent and cleft her very soul.
It was no wonder that Katharine did not understand what was taking place. Fortunately, being much occupied with her own very complicated existence, she did not attempt any further analysis of the situation, did not accidentally guess what was really the matter, and wisely concluded that it would be best to leave her mother to herself for a time.
On the morning after the events last chronicled, Mrs. Lauderdale returned to her work, and at a quarter before eleven Katharine was ready to go out and was watching for Ralston at the library window. As soon as she saw him in the distance she let herself out of the house and went to meet him. He glanced at her rather anxiously as they exchanged greetings, and she thought that he looked tired and careworn. There were shadows under his eyes, and his dark skin looked rather bloodless.