malheur ca se verra. Il y aura
certainement une cicatrice_!"

"Nonsense," Ormiston said harshly. "It's nothing, Kitty, the merest
scratch."

"Yes, my dear, we will have the carriage at once,"--this from Mr.
Cathcart to his wife. The incident, from all points of view, shocked
his sense of decency. Immediate retirement became his sole object.

Lady Calmady moved away, carrying the boy. She trembled a little. He
was heavy. Moreover, she sickened at the sight of blood. But little
Helen Ormiston caught at her dress, looked up at her.

"I hate you," she said, hissing the words out with concentrated passion
between her pretty even teeth. "You have spoilt me. I will hate you
always, when I grow up. I will never forget."

Alone in the great state-bedroom next door, a long time elapsed before
either Richard or Katherine spoke. The boy leaned back against the sofa
cushions, holding his mother's hand. The casements stood wide open, and
little winds laden with the scent of the hawthorns in the park wandered
in, gently stirring the curtains of the ebony bed, so that the trees of
the Forest of This Life thereon embroidered appeared somewhat
mournfully to wave their branches, while the Hart fled forward and the
Leopard, relentless in perpetual pursuit, followed close behind. There
was a crunching of wheels on the gravel, a sound of hurried farewells.
Then in a minute or two more the evening quiet held its own again.

Suddenly Dickie flung himself down across Katherine's lap, his poor
body shaken by a tempest of weeping.

"Mother, I can't bear it--I can't bear it," he sobbed. "Tell me, does
everybody do that?"

"Do what, my own precious?" she said, calm from very excess of sorrow.
Later she would weep too in the dark, lying lonely in the cold comfort
of that stately bed.

"Laugh at me, mother, mock at me?" and his voice, for all that he tried
to control it, tore at his throat and rose almost to a shriek.

CHAPTER VI

DEALING WITH A PHYSICIAN OF THE BODY AND A PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL

History repeats itself, and to Katherine just now came most unwelcome
example of such repetition. She had foreseen that some such crisis must
arise as had arisen. Yet when it arose, the crisis proved none the less
agonising because of that foreknowledge. Two strains of feeling
struggled within her. A blinding sorrow for her child, a fear of and
shame at her own violence of anger. Katherine's mind was of an
uncompromising honesty. She k