With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barney called “Her Irresponsible Frenchiness,” and Nora, Katrine spent a busy month trying to forget her meeting with Frank entirely.  In the daytime she could do this, but at night she wondered much concerning him—­if he were back at Ravenel; if Dermott had proceeded in the bitter business concerning the early marriage, with many plans for readjustments in case he had done so.

Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolina associates, Katrine had news of Frank’s return to Ravenel immediately after the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to France following close upon the heels of his return.

Early in November—­it was the afternoon of the first snowfall—­delayed letters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for her signature.  She was to have her premiere in May, and Josef wrote that he would go up from Paris with her.

This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris, so that the claim afterward made that Katrine’s Metropolitan engagement was cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was to sing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.

In the mail containing the contracts came other letters, the most important being one from Dermott, stating as an incident that her debt to Frank had been cancelled, and as a matter of pronounced importance that he was wearing a new green tie.  He ended by saying that he would give an account of his stewardship on January 1st, and that he hoped he had done his duty to her and his dearly remembered cousin.  He wrote no word of Ravenel, neither of developments nor compromises, and Katrine concluded not unnaturally that the matter had been allowed to rest.

But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion.  The first was McDermott, who, as he put it, “wasn’t going to betray a trust because a girl flouted him a bit”; and the second, Ravenel himself, who was showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflagging search he was making for the truth.

She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almost daily messages or tokens of his remembrance.  During his first visit he mentioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street, and that he was watching the money situation day and night with little time for visiting.

His second coming was a fortnight later.  In the afternoon Katrine had been reading by the fire an old Italian tale of love and death.  It seemed hardly an epoch-making experience in her life, and yet there had come to her, like the letting in of sudden light, the knowledge that love was beyond and above reason, as religion is, as life itself, of which love is the cause.  She had worked to forget, had been taught how to forget, yet she knew she had not forgotten, and that her listlessness since her visit to Mrs. Van Rensselaer had been chiefly worry lest trouble should come to Frank.