“What foolishness, Kate!  I never got it, of course, or you would have heard from me right away.  A number of my letters have gone astray of late.  But I don’t remember a thing about it, except that you walked off with your—­” again he hesitated—­“with Mr. Willits, which, of course, was the most natural thing for you to do in the world.  How is he, by the way?”

Kate drew back her shoulders with that quick movement common to her when some antagonism in her mind preceded her spoken word.

“I don’t know—­I haven’t seen him for some weeks.”

St. George started in his chair:  “You haven’t!  He isn’t ill, is he?”

“No, I think not,” she rejoined calmly.

“Oh, then he has gone down to his father’s.  Yes, I remember he goes quite often,” he ventured.

“No, I think he is still here.”  Her gaze was on the window as she spoke, through which could be seen the tops of the trees glistening in the sunlight.

“And you haven’t seen him?  Why?” asked St. George wonderingly—­he was not sure he had heard her aright.

“I told him not to come,” she replied in a positive tone.

St. George settled back in his chair.  Had there been a clock in the room its faintest tick would have rung out like a trip-hammer.

“Then you have had a quarrel:  he has broken his promise to you and got drunk again.”

“No, he has never broken it; he has kept it as faithfully as Harry kept his.”

“You don’t mean, Kate, that you have broken off your engagement?”

She reached over and picked up her parasol:  “There never was any engagement.  I have always felt sorry for Mr. Willits and tried my best to love him and couldn’t—­that is all.  He understands it perfectly; we both do.  It was one of the things that couldn’t be.”

All sorts of possibilities surged one after the other through the old diplomat’s mind.  A dim light increasing in intensity began to shine about him.  What it meant he dared not hope.  “What does your father say?” he asked slowly, after a pause in which he had followed every expression that crossed her face.

“Nothing—­and it wouldn’t alter the case if he did.  I am the best judge of what is good for me.”  There was a certain finality in her cadences that repelled all further discussion.  He remembered having heard the same ring before.

“When did all this happen?—­this telling him not to come?” he persisted, determined to widen the inquiry.  His mind was still unable to fully grasp the situation.

“About five weeks ago.  Do you want to know the very night?” She turned her head as she spoke and looked at him with her full, deep eyes.

“Yes, if you wish me to.”

“The night Mr. Horn read ‘The Cricket on the Hearth,’” she answered in a tone of relief—­as if some great crisis had marked the hour, the passing of which had brought her infinite peace.  “I told him when I got home, and I have never seen him since.”