go. He dared not look at her while
he spoke, lest seeing her should unnerve him altogether.

Katherine was very still. She made no outcry. Yet her very stillness
seemed to him the more ominous, and the horror of the recital grew upon
him. His voice sounded to him unnaturally loud and harsh in the
surrounding quiet. Once her silken draperies gave a shuddering
rustle--that was all.

At last it was over. At last he dared to look at her. The colour and
youthful roundness had gone out of her face. It was gray as her dress,
fixed and rigid as a marble mask. Ormiston was overcome with a
consuming pity for her and with a violence of self-hatred. Hangman, and
to his own sister--in truth, it seemed to him to have come to that! He
knelt down in front of her, laying hold of both her knees.

"Kitty, can you ever forgive me for telling you this?" he asked
hoarsely.

Even in this extremity Katherine's inherent sweetness asserted itself.
She would have smiled, but her frozen lips refused. Her eyelids
quivered a little and closed.

"I have nothing to forgive you, dear," she said. "Indeed, it is good of
you to tell me, since--since so it is."

She put her hands upon his shoulders, gripping them fast, and bowed her
head. The little flames crackled, dancing among the pine logs and the
silk of her dress rustled as her bosom rose and fell.

"It won't make you ill again?" Roger asked anxiously.

Katherine shook her head.

"Oh, no!" she said, "I have no more time for illness. This is a thing
to cure, as a cautery cures--to burn away all idleness and
self-indulgent, sick room fancies. See, I am strong, I am well."

She stood up, her hands slipping down from Ormiston's shoulders and
steadying themselves on his hands as he too rose. Her face was still
ashen, but purpose and decision had come into her eyes.

"Do this for me," she said, almost imperiously. "Go to Denny, tell her
to bring me the baby. She is to leave him with me. And tell her, as she
loves both him and me,--as she values her place here at
Brockhurst,--she is not to speak."

As he looked at her Ormiston turned cold. She was terrible just then.

"Katherine," he said quickly, "what on earth are you going to do?"

"No harm to my baby in any case--you need not be alarmed. I am quite to
be trusted. Only I cannot be reasoned with or opposed, still less
condoled with or comforted, yet. I want my baby, and I must have him,
here, alone, the doors shut--locked if I please." He