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 “There’s no reason why I should go home, then?” Cassandra said, pausing. “Unless you want me to go, Katharine? What do you want me to do?”

For the first time their eyes met.

“You wanted us to fall in love,” Cassandra exclaimed, as if she read the certainty there. But as she looked she saw a sight that surprised her. The tears rose slowly in Katharine’s eyes and stood there, brimming but contained—the tears of some profound emotion, happiness, grief, renunciation; an emotion so complex in its nature that to express it was impossible, and Cassandra, bending her head and receiving the tears upon her cheek, accepted them in silence as the consecration of her love.

“Please, miss,” said the maid, about eleven o’clock on the following morning, “Mrs. Milvain is in the kitchen.”

A long wicker basket of flowers and branches had arrived from the country, and Katharine, kneeling upon the floor of the drawing-room, was sorting them while Cassandra watched her from an arm-chair, and absentmindedly made spasmodic offers of help which were not accepted. The maid’s message had a curious effect upon Katharine.

She rose, walked to the window, and, the maid being gone, said emphatically and even tragically:

“You know what that means.”

Cassandra had understood nothing.

“Aunt Celia is in the kitchen,” Katharine repeated.

“Why in the kitchen?” Cassandra asked, not unnaturally.

“Probably because she’s discovered something,” Katharine replied. Cassandra’s thoughts flew to the subject of her preoccupation.

“About us?” she inquired.

“Heaven knows,” Katharine replied. “I shan’t let her stay in the kitchen, though. I shall bring her up here.”