Part 32 (1/2)

The house was quite silent. He had told Bronson that he would put out the lights in the smoking-room when they left. No one was about and not a breath of wind stirred a tree outside.

He sat there for some minutes--and then his heart began to beat violently.

Whose was that soft footfall directly overhead? With the departure of the grandchildren from the old nurseries there was no one left in the wing but Katherine Bus.h.!.+

All sorts of visions came to him; she had not yet gone to bed--perhaps she, too, was waiting for the New Year?

He got up and listened, his pulses bounding so that he seemed to hear his heart thumping against his side.

There was the sound again!

It was not to be endured. Fierce emotion shook him, and at last all restraint fell from him, and pa.s.sion became lord.

Then he extinguished the lights and softly crept up the stairs.

CHAPTER XVIII

Katherine had that instant removed her dressing-gown after the brus.h.i.+ng of her hair, which now hung in two long plaits. She was in the act of slipping into bed. The carpet in the pa.s.sage was thick, and she heard no sounds, so that the first thing which startled her was the actual opening of the door of her room, which it had not been her custom to lock.

For one second a blind terror shook her, and then all her nerve and resource returned. She stood there magnificent in her anger and resentment. She had no female instinct instantly to seize the dressing-gown to cover herself. She stood straight up in her cheap nainsook nightgown, all the beautiful lines of her tall, slender figure showing in the soft shaded light.

Gerard Strobridge was like a man drunk with wine. His eye flamed and he trembled with excitement. The bed, a small old wooden one, was between them with a writing-table at the foot. So that to reach her he must go round by the fire.

This he did, while he whispered hoa.r.s.ely:

”Katherine--I love you--madly--I had to come to you, darling girl!” Then he stopped within a few feet of her, literally sobered by the expression of her face. It showed not an atom of fear--rather the proud contempt of an empress ordering the death of a presuming slave.

She did not speak for a moment; she seemed to draw up to her full height, and even to grow taller; she was only an inch or two less than himself. And if the scorn of eyes could kill, he would have lain there dead.

”Darling!” he cried, and went forward to take her in his arms.

She stepped back only one step and spoke at last, her deep tones low.

”If you dare to touch me, I will kill you--I am not afraid of you, you know--You are only a beast, after all--and I am the man with the club.”

”Beautiful fiend!”--but he hesitated--He was no coward, and cared not a jot for her threats, only his fastidiousness was a.s.sailed by the thought of a struggling, fighting woman in his embrace, when he had come there for--Love! It would be wiser, perhaps, to cajole her. He was too intoxicated with pa.s.sion to realise that it would also seem more dignified!

”Katherine, do not be so horribly unkind, darling girl! I love you wildly, I tell you, and I want you to be mine.”

”What for?” She was perfectly calm still, and never moved from her place.

”That we may be happy, you sweet thing. I want to hold you in my arms and caress you, and make us both forget that there is anything else in the whole wide world but our own two selves!”

And exalted by this enchanting picture, he drew a little closer and held out his hands.

”I tell you plainly--if you come one step nearer to me, you do so at your own risk. I will tear the flesh from your face with my nails, and strangle you.” Her voice was absolutely deadly in its icy intentness. ”I am not weak, and I despise your mean action in coming here to-night too greatly to have any fear.”

The breeding in him responded to this sting.