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They distinctly heard her murmur as she crossed the flags and disappeared through the French window, without seeing them: "Oh, dear, what a crazy thing to do!" Genevra, peering through the glasses, had discovered the figure of Chase on the bungalow porch. She was amused to find that he, from his distant post, was also regarding the château through a pair of glasses.
He was looking eagerly, intently toward the long, low headland beyond the town of Aratat. "The smoke! See? Close in shore, too! By heaven, Genevra there's a steamer off there. She's a small one or she wouldn't run in so close. It it may be the yacht! Wait! We'll soon see. She'll pass the point in a few minutes."
Marian asked; but Katy did not remember any, or if she did, it was not "Genevra Lambert, aged twenty-two." And so Marian asked her no more questions concerning St. Mary's, at Alnwick, but talked instead of London and other places, until three hours went by, and down in the street the coachman chafed and fretted at the long delay, wandering what kept his mistress in that neighborhood so long.
Did he sometimes wish her there, instead of Katy Lennox, of Barlow origin? Did he contrast their faces one with the other, giving the preference to Genevra, or was Katy's liked the best? All these questions Katy asked herself, while her fingers fluttered about the clasp, which she half dreaded to unfasten.
And Katy would have forgiven him then, for not a shadow of regret had darkened her life since it was linked with his, and in her perfect love she could have pardoned much. But Wilford did not tell. It was not needful; he made himself believe not necessary for her ever to know that once he met a maiden called Genevra, almost as beautiful as she, but never so beloved. No, never.
"In a tremor of anger and excitement I quitted the spot, my mind wholly made up with regard to my future. That there was something wrong about Genevra I did not doubt, and I would not give her a chance to explain by telling her what I had seen, but sent her back to England, giving her ample means for defraying the expenses of her journey and for living in comfort after her arrival there.
Latterly she has found it out, and it is having a very extraordinary effect upon her." Mrs. Lennox was too much afraid of the man addressing her so haughtily to make him any reply, and so she only wept softly as she bent to kiss her child, still talking of Genevra and the empty grave at St. Mary's, where she once sat down. And this was all Mrs.
"The picture, Wilford you have forgotten that," Katy called after him, as he was running down the stairs. Wilford would rather have been with her when she first looked upon Genevra, but there was not time for that, and hastily unlocking his private drawer he carried the case to Katy's room, laying it upon the bureau and saying to her: "I would not mind it now, until it is fully light.
Incidentally I heard that the postmaster at Alnwick had been written to by an American gentleman, who asked if such a person as Genevra Lambert was buried at St. Mary's; and then I knew he believed me dead, even though the name appended to the letter was not Wilford Cameron, nor was the writing his, for, as the cousin of the dead Genevra. I asked to see the letter, and my request was granted.
"She had pretty hair," she thought; "darker, richer than mine," and into Katy's heart there crept a feeling akin to jealousy, lest Genevra had been fairer than herself, as well as better loved.
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