"Oh! no, I did not, nor anyone else." The name seemed to hurt and Mary-Clare leaned back. "May I ask who you are?" she said. Mary-Clare was indignant at she hardly knew what; hurt, too, by what was steadying her. She knew beyond doubt that the woman near her was one of Northrup's world!
"I am Miss Morris. I am engaged to be married to Mr. Northrup."
It were better to cut deep while cutting, and Kathryn's nerve was now set to her task. She unrelentingly eyed her victim. She went on:
"I can see how this must shock you. I sent my car on to the inn. I wanted a walk and--well! I came upon this place. Fate is such a strange thing."
Kathryn ran her words along rather wildly. The silence of her companion, the calm way in which she was regarding her, were having an unpleasant effect. When Kathryn became aware of her own voice she was apt to talk too much--she grew confidential.
"Mr. Northrup's mother is ill. She needs him. The way I have known all this right along is simply a miracle."
How much more Kathryn might have said she was never to know, for Mary-Clare raised a hand as though to stay the inane torrent.
"What can you possibly mean," she asked, and her eyes darkened, "by knowing _this_ all along? I do not understand--what have you known?"
"Oh! do be sensible," she said, and her voice was hard and cold. "You must see I have found you out--why pretend? When a man like Mr. Northrup leaves home and forgets his duties--does not even write, buries himself in such a place as this and stays on--what does it mean? What can it possibly mean?"
Mary-Clare was spared much of what Kathryn was creating because she was so far away--so far, far away from the true significance of it all. She was seeing Northrup as Kathryn had never seen him; would never see him. She realized his danger. It was all so sudden and revolting. Only recently had she imagined his past, his environment; she had taken him as a wonderful experience in her barren, sterile life, but now she considered him as threatened from an unsuspected source. A natural revulsion from the type that Kathryn Morris represented for a moment oppressed her, but she dared not think of that nor of her own right to resent the hateful slurs cast upon her. She must do what she could for Northrup--do it more or less blindly, crudely, but she must go as she saw light and was given time.