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In the following fortnight Francis and Katrine met but three times.
One day, having grown restless, she went to walk, taking the road from the plantation back into the mountains. Returning by the ford, she heard laughter and the ring of horses' hoofs, and by a sudden turn of the road came directly upon Frank, who, separated from a party, was riding beside Anne Lennox. At first sight of her whom she knew instinctively to be a rival, Katrine was reminded of a golden peony, for the pale-yellow hair, bright hazel eyes shot with yellow light, and thick, creamy skin had given Anne Lennox from early childhood a noticeable and flower-like beauty. A long-limbed, slender, full-breasted, laughing woman, with square shoulders and the carriage of one much accustomed to the saddle, she looked with curiosity at Katrine, who was standing aside beneath the elderberry-bushes to permit them to pass.
"As I was saying," Anne had just remarked, "when you act as you have done since I have been here, Frank, it's always a woman. At Biarritz, you remember, it was Mrs. Vaughn. That beast of a spring at Marno, it was Mrs. McIntire. You might as well tell me who it is. You will in the end."
"Upon my honor, Anne—" Frank began, with a laugh, when he met the clear eyes of Katrine looking at him from below.
If there had been some coldness, some resentment at his lack of attention to her, or implied jealousy at his devotion to another, he could have understood it. But there was nothing of the kind. In those eyes, which he believed the most beautiful in the world, there was nothing but a glad light at seeing him, a bright smile of recognition in which he could detect neither remembrance nor regret.
Anne Lennox turned her keen brown eyes backward to look at Katrine as she crossed the bridge. "Frank Ravenel," she exclaimed, "if a girl who looks like that lives near you, you have been making love to her! I wonder if by any chance she could be the woman!"
"She is the daughter of the new overseer," Frank answered; and his tone implied, though the words were not spoken: "and by this reason out of the class." The statement was made with misleading frankness, and Anne Lennox, understanding his pride, put the affair from her mind.
The next time of meeting between Francis and Katrine was one morning on the river road. Her cheeks flushed at sight of him, and there was an odd reserve in her manner; but she never seemed more beautiful.
He stood, hat in hand, wondering at her silence, a bit amused.
"It is a pleasant day," he suggested, at length, remotely.
"It is pleasant," she answered, with averted eyes.
"Unusual weather for this season, don't you think?" he went on, a bit of teasing in his tone.
"I haven't thought of it," she said, concisely.
"Suppose you think about it now," he suggested, jesting still, but not quite at ease concerning her mood.
Suddenly she turned toward him, her face suffused, her eyes troubled.
"Katrine," he cried, "what is the matter? Tell me! Let me help you!"
"I'm jealous," she said, simply.
"Jealous!" he repeated. "Of whom?"
"You."
She had clasped her hands in front of her, and stood with her chin drawn in, looking at him from under a tangle of dusky hair.
"You poor child," he said, moving toward her.
"Don't!" she cried, backing away, "don't try to comfort me! I've always, always been like this. I cannot help it. Whenever I care for anybody—oh, it never made any difference whether I had any right to care or to be jealous! I just was; and it hurts!" She put her hands suddenly over her heart and began to speak rapidly, as a child does when accumulated trouble makes silence no longer possible. "I hated her when I saw she was with you; far up the road, when I only knew she was a woman; and when I saw her nearer I hated her more. She is so pretty," she explained. "Are you going to marry her?" she demanded.
"Not exactly," he answered, grimly.
"Good-bye!" she cried, dropping down the river-bank to the skiff.
"Katrine!" he called.
"I'm not coming back!" she cried through the bushes. "I'm never coming back! Good-bye!"
Two days later there came from Ravenel House a polite note, cordial by the book, asking that Miss Dulany come to them for dinner on the fifth; and, it added, perhaps Miss Dulany might give them an opportunity to hear her charming voice. It was written in the quaint, old-fashioned hand of Mrs. Ravenel.
Katrine read it with a curious smile around her lips, answering while the messenger waited. She "regretted extremely that a cold"; she paused a minute in the writing to reflect on the way the cold had come; sitting one damp afternoon in the rose-garden with the son of the writer of this extremely polite invitation; "regretted extremely that this cold, which seemed more persistent than such things generally were, prevented her accepting Mrs. Ravenel's most kind invitation."
The third meeting was an intentional one on Frank's part. The people at Ravenel had become unbearable, and with no thought save for Katrine's society, he took a short cut through the laurel trees, crossed the river in his canoe, and entered the lodge garden to find her sitting on the broad steps of the house, her chin resting in her hands. There was an exaltation in her little being, an alluring remoteness, an entire concentration upon her own thoughts, which one sees in a child; and when one saw her thus, dreaming hillward, one knew there were great ongoings in that dusky head of hers.
At sight of him she bowed gravely, moving that he might have nearly all the rug upon which she had been sitting, not minding the stones for herself in the least. Her careless generosity spoke even in this trifling act.
"You are bored?" she asked, after a silence which he seemed disinclined to break.
"To extinction, little lady," he answered, puffing a cloud of smoke into the hollyhocks. "You see, you have spoiled me for those others." There was another pause. "And you?" he asked.
"I? Well, I practised, and planted some flowers, and made some things for Miranda's baby, and then"—she hesitated, with an adorably shy look full of that pathos, which made so many of her simplest statements seem claims for protection, "and then I went over into 'My Own Land.'"
He regarded her for a minute, his approval of her showing in every line of his handsome face. It was in these untouchable moods of her, when she eluded him utterly, when she took him out of himself entirely, that he found the most zest in intercourse with her.
"Is it a long journey to that land of yours?" he demanded, gravely, "making believe" with her.
"Not long," she answered, "but sometimes difficult. I go down to a queer gate; I never knew where I got that gate," she threw in, in an explaining way; "and let down the bars and walk up a long driveway of blue pines, and there I am!"
"Go on," he said, "though I think it shabby that you've never told me of your property before now."
"I found this country; oh, years ago! Of course, I have changed it a great deal. There was only one house at first, like Kenilworth Castle, only much larger, with those heavenly, deep windows. And I have taken all the people I liked to live there—"
"Jolly," he said; adding, hastily: "But not in the least a house-party sort of thing, is it? where they play bridge and drink whiskey-sours?"
Katrine shook her head. "These people live in My Country. I've stolen some, but others come of their own accord. They are very great people. Colonel Newcome is the host. You know him?"
"Adsum," Frank answered, softly, and Katrine flashed a smile of appreciation back at him.
"And Henry Esmond," she went on, "I have a time with him. Of course, he never really married that other woman and went to live in Virginia. He adored Beatrice until the end, and is always trying to have her with him. I've had it out with him!" She smiled again, as at a memory, and extended one hand dramatically.
"'Henry Esmond,' I said (you know he's a little man, so I looked straight in his eyes as I spoke), 'I will not have her here with her red stockings and their silver clocks.'
"'Ye've listened to gossip of her,' says he.
"''Twas you yourself that rode after her and the King, when ye crossed swords with his Majesty for her honor,' said I.
"'An event which never took place, believe me,' said he, with a bow, and he bows like a king.
"'Ye lie like a gentleman,' said I, 'and I've pride in ye for it; but Beatrice Esmond never comes in here.' And then I just told the truth to him. 'I've had jealousy of her for many years, despite her morals,' I explained."
Ravenel threw back his head and laughed.
"Oh, you women!" he cried. "Are there many ladies resident in that land of yours?"
"Some; not many. Di Vernon, of course, and Mary Richling, and Dora, whom David Copperfield never had sense enough to appreciate, and oh, the children! Huckleberry Finn and Little Lord Fauntleroy! The Nigger Jim tends the grounds, you know. And that divine Harold of the Dream Days!
"One awful day," she went on, "when everything seemed wrong," the quick tears came to her eyes as she spoke, "and I was sick and disgraced before people and wanted to die, I went into My Own Land, and there was Jean Valjean at the bars waiting for me. He smiled as I came."
"'Cheer up, Little Irish Lady!' he cried, at sight of me, 'cheer up! There is reason for everything in that Great Beyond that we'll understand some day.' And that night, because of his strength, I went to sleep comforted, and the next morning sang the 'Ah! Patria mia' quite nobly. It was payment for the suffering, perhaps. Who can tell?"
"And whom," it was curious how Frank's jealousy showed in the question, "whom do you like best of all these tenant folk of yours, Katrine?"
"Ye'll never tell?" She turned to look him full in the eyes. "Promise me ye'll never tell; for if the word of it gets abroad there'll be no keeping him in bounds, he's so filled with conceit of himself already." She leaned toward Frank and whispered: "It's Alan Breck. Ah," she cried, "you feel so fine and sure when ye're out with him! With his glittering sword and his belt of gold, and the way he takes the centre of the stage and the speech skin-fitted to the occasion. It's grand to be with him then. But it's none of these that I love him for. Do you remember when he says to Catriona: ' I'm a kind of henchman to Davie ,' she quoted Alan's words with a deep-voiced enthusiasm, ' and whatever he cares for I've got to care for, too. I'm not so very bonny, but I'm leal to them I love .' In My Land, that is all they care for. They are of all religions and times and climes, but they are loyal, every one." And, turning to him suddenly, she brought her wee bit of a fist down on the hard stone, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glorious to see. "It's all there is, in My Land or yours, that makes life worth while— Loyalty ! The 'enduring to the end.' Even if one's none so bonny, he can be leal to them he loves !"
Frank threw his cigar away and moved nearer to her, holding out his hand with an odd combination of "make-believe" and real pleading in his voice.
"Katrine, dear," he said, "take me to live in that land of yours. I want to let down the bars of the gate you don't know where you found, and go up the pine driveway to meet Colonel Newcome. I want all that it means to have those people for intimate friends."
"One must make one's own 'Land,'" Katrine answered. "And besides," with a curious, lovable puckering of her eyelids, "men mustn't dream things. Men must do ."
There was a silence.
"Must they?" he asked, at length. "Why?"
"Did it ever occur to you," she asked, abruptly, "that you might work—ever, I mean—when you were a boy?"
"Never for a second."
"You never felt that you would like to take a part in great affairs, as other men do?"
"Why should I, Katrine? I have all the money I can possibly want. Life is short. I come of a family who tire of living quickly. Say, for instance, I live until I'm sixty. I probably sha'n't, you know, but we'll say so for argument. One-third of the time I sleep, which reduces the real living to forty years. Until the time of fifteen one doesn't count, anyway. That gives me but twenty-five years of life. Now, I ask you"—he threw back his head as he spoke, his face charming with a humorous smile, an illuminated eye—"now, I ask you, if you would be so hard-hearted as to desire me—with but twenty-five years at my disposal, remember—to spend them in a treadmill of work when I might be spending them under the pines and the beeches with you, Katrine— with you !"
She had clasped her knees, making of herself a magnetic bunch of color and lovableness, and she let her eyes rest in his a moment before she spoke. "Don't talk that way, will you? I like to think of you always as a great man—a man of action, a man who helps."
They regarded each other steadily for a full minute before he said:
"It has begun."
"What?" she asked, mystified.
"That mental treatment you spoke of some time ago. You are having a terrible effect on me, Katrine, and I find it extremely uncomfortable," he added, laughing.