Lysbet drew her lips tight, and said nothing.  The last shadow of her own dream had departed also, but it was of her child she thought.  At that hour she hated Hyde; and, after Joris had gone, she said in low, angry tones, over and over, as she folded the freshly ironed linen, “I wish that Neil had killed him!” About two o’clock she went to Katherine.  The girl opened her door at once to her.  There was nothing to be said, no hope to offer.  Joris had seen Hyde embark; he had heard Mrs. Gordon and the colonel bid him farewell.  Several of his brother officers, also, and the privates of his own troop, had been on the dock to see him sail.  His departure was beyond dispute.

And even while she looked at the woeful young face before her, the mother anticipated the smaller, festering sorrows that would spring from this great one,—­the shame and mortification the mockery of those who had envied Katherine; the inquiries, condolences, and advices of friends; the complacent self-congratulation of Batavius, who would be certain to remind them of every provoking admonition he had given on the subject.  And who does not know that these little trials of life are its hardest trials?  The mother did not attempt to say one word of comfort, or hope, or excuse.  She only took the child in her arms, and wept for her.  At this hour she would not wound her by even an angry word concerning him.

“I loved him so much, moeder.”

“Thou could not help it.  Handsome, and gallant, and gay he was.  I never shall forget seeing thee dance with him.”

“And he did love me.  A woman knows when she is loved.”

“Yes, I am sure he loved thee.”

“He has gone?  Really gone?”

“No doubt is there of it.  Stay in thy room, and have thy grief out with thyself.”

“No; I will come to my work.  Every day will now be the same.  I shall look no more for any joy; but my duty I will do.”

They went downstairs together.  The clean linen, the stockings that required mending, lay upon the table.  Katherine sat down to the task.  Resolutely, but almost unconsciously, she put her needle through and through.  Her suffering was pitiful; this little one, who a few months ago would have wept for a cut finger, now silently battling with the bitterest agony that can come to a loving woman,—­the sense of cruel, unexpected, unmerited desertion.  At first Lysbet tried to talk to her; but she soon saw that the effort to answer was beyond Katherine’s power, and conversation was abandoned.  So for an hour, an hour of speechless sorrow, they sat.  The tick of the clock, the purr of the cat, the snap of a breaking thread, alone relieved the tension of silence in which this act of suffering was completed.  Its atmosphere was becoming intolerable, like that of a nightmare; and Lysbet was feeling that she must speak and move, and so dissipate it, when there was a loud knock at the front door.

Katherine trembled all over.  “To-day I cannot bear it, mother.  No one can I see.  I will go upstairs.”