As she listened to her mother’s departing footsteps, it all came back to her, and she felt faint again. She struggled to her feet in the gloom and groped about till she had found a match, and lit the gas and drew down the old brown shades of the window. The light hurt her eyes for a moment, and as she pressed her hands to them she felt that they were wet. “I suppose I’ve been crying in my sleep!” she exclaimed aloud. “What a baby I am!” She looked at herself in the mirror with some curiosity, before beginning to dress. “I’m an object for men and angels to stare at!” she said, and tried to laugh at her dejected appearance. “However,” she added, “I suppose I must go. I’m Katharine Lauderdale--‘that nice girl who never has headaches and things’--so I have no excuse.” She stopped for a moment, still looking at herself. “But I’m not Katharine Lauderdale!” she said presently, whispering the words to herself. “I’m Katharine Ralston--if not, what am I? Ah, dear me!” she sighed. “I wonder how it will all end!” At all events, Katharine Lauderdale, or Katharine Ralston, she was herself again, as she turned from the mirror and began to think of what she must wear at the Van De Waters’ dinner-party. CHAPTER XXVII. Even John Ralston’s tough constitution could not have been expected to shake off in a few hours the fatigue and soreness of such an experience as he had undergone. Even if he had been perfectly well, he would have stayed at home that day in the expectation of receiving an answer from Katharine; and as it was, he needed as much rest as he could get. He had not often been at the trouble of taking care of himself, and the sensation was not altogether disagreeable, as he sat by his own fireside, in the small room which went by the name of ‘Mr. Ralston’s study.’ He stretched out his feet to the fire, drank a little tea from time to time, stared at the logs, smoked, turned over the pages of a magazine without reading half a dozen sentences, and revolved the possibilities of his life without coming to any conclusion. He was stiff and bruised. When he moved his head, it ached, and when he tried to lean to the right, his neck hurt him on the left side. But if he did not move at all, he felt no pain. There was a sort of perpetual drowsy hum in his ears, partly attributable, he thought, to the singing of a damp log in the fire, and partly to his own imagination. When he tried to think of anything but his own rather complicated affairs, he almost fell asleep. But when his attention was fixed on his present situation, it seemed to him that his life had all at once come to a standstill just as events had been moving most quickly. As for really sleeping in the intervals of thought, his constant anxiety for Katharine’s reply to his letter kept his faculties awake. He knew, however, that it would be quite unreasonable to expect anything from her before twelve o’clock. He tried to be patient.