For a moment Katherine’s consciousness reeled.  The roar of the ocean which girds our life round was in her ears, the feeling of chill and collapse at her heart.  But with a supreme will she took possession of herself.  “Weak I will not be.  All I will know.  All I will suffer.”  And with these thoughts she went back to the room, and took her place at the table.  In a few minutes the rest followed.  Batavius did not speak to her.  It was also something of a cross to him that madam would not talk of the event.  He did not think that Katherine deserved to have her ill-regulated feelings so far considered, and he had almost a sense of personal injury in the restraint of the whole household.

He had anticipated madam’s amazement and shock.  He had felt a just satisfaction in the suffering he was bringing to Katherine.  He had determined to point out to Joanna the difference between herself and her sister, and the blessedness of her own lot in loving so respectably and prudently as she had done.  But nothing had happened as he expected.  The meal, instead of being pleasantly lengthened over such dreadful intelligence, was hurried and silent.  Katherine, instead of making herself an image of wailing or unconscious remorse, sat like other people at the table, and pretended to drink her tea.

It was some comfort that after it Joanna and he could walk in the garden, and talk the affair thoroughly over.  Katherine watched them away, and then she fled to her room.  For a few minutes she could let her sorrow have way, and it would help her to bear the rest.  And oh, how she wept!  She took from their hiding-place the few letters her lover had written her, and she mourned over them as women mourn in such extremities.  She kissed the words with passionate love; she vowed, amid her broken ejaculations of tenderness, to be faithful to him if he lived, to be faithful to his memory if he died.  She never thought of Neil; or, if she did, it was with an anger that frightened her.  In the full tide of her anguish, Lysbet stood at the door.  She heard the inarticulate words of woe, and her heart ached for her child.  She had followed her to give her comfort, to weep with her; but she felt that hour that Katherine was no more a child to be soothed with her mother’s kiss.  She had become a woman, and a woman’s sorrow had found her.

[Illustration:  Oh, how she wept!]

It was near ten o’clock when Joris came home.  His face was troubled, his clothing disarranged and blood-stained; and Lysbet never remembered to have seen him so completely exhausted.  “Bram is with Neil,” he said; “he will not be home.”

“And thou?”

“I helped them carry—­the other.  To the ‘King’s Arms’ we took him.  A strong man was needed until their work the surgeons had done.  I stayed; that is all.”

“Live will he?”

“His right lung is pierced clean through.  A bad wound in the throat he has.  At death’s door is he, from loss of the blood.  But then, youth he has, and a great spirit, and hope.  I wish not for his death, my God knows.”