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The Carley Burch whom she recognized as of old, passionately hated this life and work of Glenn Kilbourne's, but the rebel self, an unaccountable and defiant Carley, loved him all the better for them. Carley drew a long deep breath before she called Glenn. This meeting would be momentous and she felt no absolute surety of herself.
In the bow-windowed front room of Horace Kilbourne's house his wife was lying on the sofa semi-paralysed, a drunkard. "That you, Horry dear?" she said, as, with a gloomy, hopeless face he looked in upon the unlovely sight.
He looked at her steadily, holding her eyes with his own, for a space; then left her and went on his way. He went into his house, the door of which stood open to the night. In the airless, bow-windowed room, upon the untidy sofa where he had left her, his wife was lying dead. No inquest was held on Horace Kilbourne's wife. The doctor had attended her almost daily.
Carley was swift to see the youth and grace of her; and then a face that struck Carley as neither pretty nor beautiful, but still wonderfully attractive. "Flo, here's Miss Burch," burst out Mrs. Hutter, with cheerful importance. "Glenn Kilbourne's girl come all the way from New York to surprise him!" "Oh, Carley, I'm shore happy to meet you!" said the girl, in a voice of slow drawling richness.
"He does not seem to wish to be friendly any more." She looked at him in silence, considering the statement. Kilbourne's punctiliousness was exaggerated, but she thought she understood it. It was delicacy carried to an extreme, perhaps, but she was proud to think it was characteristic of him.
At this time the child was five years old, and a regular attendant at "Ma'am Kilbourne's" school on West Street, to which she walked every day hand in hand with her chubby, rosy-faced, bare-footed, four-year- old brother, Henry Ward. With the ability to read germinated the intense literary longing that was to be hers through life.
"I don't see why he need be afraid of being civil to me, for all that," the brother said, almost as if she had spoken. The next time Kate Grantley had an opportunity of looking in Kilbourne's face she was painfully struck by his appearance. The man was thinner, more worn, years older. His head seemed to droop beneath a heavier burthen than of yore; he walked as if his feet were shod with lead.
At the moment she heard the postman's whistle outside; and a little later the servant brought up her mail. The first letter, large, soiled, thick, bore the postmark Flagstaff, and her address in Glenn Kilbourne's writing. Carley stared at it. Her heart gave a great leap. Her hand shook. She sat down suddenly as if the strength of her legs was inadequate to uphold her.
He had unnaturally bright dark eyes, and a flush of fever in his hollow cheeks. "How do!" he said, with a wan smile. "Who're you?" "I'm Glenn Kilbourne's fiancee," she replied, holding out her hand. "Say, I ought to've known you," he said, eagerly, and a warmth of light changed the gray shade of his face. "You're the girl Carley! You're almost like my my own girl. By golly! You're some looker!
It was strange that, instead of the looked-for lightening of gloom, there was, if possible, in his bearing, his wife being safely dead and buried, an increase of melancholy. Kate Grantley, who thought she knew him better than the rest, was not surprised that the little letter she wrote him on the first news of Mrs Kilbourne's death remained unanswered.
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