And this was the intelligence carried to the servants, who wondered that their mistress did not order the carriage, but started off on foot, her face looking ghastly white beneath the folds of her crape veil as she closed the door behind and looked back at the home she might be leaving forever.  The carriage, she knew, would lead to detection, and as it was not far to the New Haven depot, she kept on her way until the train was reached, and she in a seat by herself was looking with eyes which could not weep over the city she was so fast leaving behind.  Had she for one moment suspected Morris’s love, all her womanly instincts would have kept her from seeking him then, but she had no such suspicion.  Morris was her elder brother, and like a stricken sister she was going to him with her grief, sure of sympathy and sure of counsel for the right.

The afternoon was cold and stormy, so that it was late in the evening when the long train reached West Silverton, where Katy was to stop.  Owing to the storm but few were at the depot, and among them none who recognized Katy Cameron beneath the heavy veil she kept so closely over her face, even while asking for a conveyance out to Linwood.  It was a comparative boy who volunteered his services, and as he had recently come to Silverton he knew nothing of Katy or of Dr. Grant, so that she was saved from all embarrassment upon that point; her driver never addressing her except to ask the way, which was not wholly familiar to him.

“Turn here.  Yes, that is right,” she said, when they reached the road which led to Linwood, and a feeling like guilt crept over her as through the leafless trees and across the meadow land she spied the farmhouse light shining through the drifting snow as if beckoning her to come.  “Not yet—­not now.  I must see Morris first,” she answered mentally to that silent invitation, and drawing the buffalo skin around her with a shiver.  She did not look again toward the farmhouse, but onward to where the lights of Linwood shone through the wintry darkness.  “This is the place,” she said, and in a moment she stood upon the broad stone steps, shaking the snow from her cloak, while the boy waited a moment, hoping to be invited to share the warmth he felt there was within that handsome building.

Katy would rather he should not stop, but when she saw how cold he was she began to relent, and telling him where to shelter his horse, pointed to the basement bidding him go in there.  Then, with a hesitating step on she began to wonder what Morris would say, she crossed the wide piazza and softly turning the door knob, stood in the hall at Linwood.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE INTERVIEW.