Love stories; North Carolina -- Fiction; Women singers -- Fiction
And Katrine found, as the train pulled out, that there was another who
had not been unmindful of her going, for Frank's man appeared from
nowhere, touched his hat with accented deference, gave her a letter in
silence, and disappeared into the blankness from which he came. But for
the envelope she held, Katrine might have believed him a vision that had
passed.
There was no formal beginning. The letter ran:
I shall not see you again until I know the truth. You will
understand the reasons. I am going to Ravenel to-day to make some
investigations. Of the outcome of these I cannot speak.
In all of this there is one thing sure. Everything may be changed
in my life but my love for you.
F.R.
It was still early in October when Katrine returned to New York and to
Nora, who was waiting for her in an old-fashioned apartment just off
Washington Square. The Irishwoman had driven a thrifty bargain for the
place, and in a well-contented spirit was setting up the household
goods.
There was a great porch at the rear of the rooms, with locust-trees in
the yard below, and Nora had already put flowers in pots about it, to
make a "nearly garden," she explained. Here, for over a month, Katrine
enjoyed the homemaking; the arranging of her Paris belongings; the
transformation of the shabby surroundings into a delightful spot of
restful color and peace.
The day after her arrival from the Van Rensselaer's, Nora announced,
with a twinkle in her eye, that there was a gentleman below whom she had
told to come right up, and Barney O'Grady entered before his mother had
ceased speaking.
Katrine greeted him with affectionate remembrance, smiling as she did
so at the change in this boy whom she had helped to New York. He was
flashily dressed, after the style of a college freshman, and conversed,
as she discovered, in a language known only to the New York newspaper
man, who, as some one told her later, has a "slanguage" all his own.
No one could have been more helpful than he, in their present situation,
however, and Katrine learned anew day by day the gratitude he cherished
toward her for the help given so long before.
Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turned
upward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like a
parenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the world
alertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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