Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/161

 She put her hand to her throat as though to lessen the ache there.

"I can't tell you how much. And remorse — it's like a knife turning, turning — his eyes with the pain and astonishment in them when I strudc at him so viciously in my temper; they haunt me. It's terrible."

Mrs. Toomey fidgeted.

Kate went on as though she found relief in talking. Her voice sounded thick, somehow, and lifeless with suffering.

"I have such a feeling of heaviness, of oppression " — she laid her hand upon her heart — " I can't describe it. If I were superstitious I'd say it was a premonition."

"Of what, for instance?" Mrs. Toomey looked frightened.

Kate shook her head.

"I don't know. The thought keeps coming that, bad as things have been, there are worse ahead of me — unhappiness — more unhappiness — like a preparation for something."

Distinctly impressed, Mrs. Toomey exclaimed inanely:

"Oh, my 1 Do you think so ? " Was she going to get "mixed up" in something, she wondered.

"I have a dread of the future — a shrinking such as a blind person might have from a danger he feels but:annot see. Your friendship is the only bright spot in the blackness — it's a peak, with the sun shining on it!" Kate's eyes filled with quick tears. They were swimming as she raised them and looked at Mrs. Toomey.

"I'm glad you feel that way," Mrs. Toomey murmured.

Something in the tone arrested Kate's attention, an unconvincing, insincere note in it. She fixed her eyes upon