"I am doing the work. Mr. Ronald is giving the money." "A very proper arrangement." "It has kept me busy. I hope you haven’t felt neglected." "Not in the least. As usual, everything has been done for me that _had_ to be done." The little old woman was trying her best to act on Martha’s advice, but her tongue, sharpened by years of skilful practice, could not sheathe its keen edge all at once. When next she spoke, it was with so studied a mildness that Katherine stared at her, wondering. "You probably met Slawson as you came in? You must have passed her on the road." "No, the Ronalds brought me home in their car. We drove out along the mountain-road, to see the foliage. We came back the other way." "Well, get your things off now. And when you’ve had your dinner, come back to me. Or—no! I’ll ring!" It darted through Katherine’s mind that her grandmother spoke with singular self-repression. Again she regarded her with puzzled eyes. Such moderation could only breed suspicion, in a mind grown abnormal in solitary confinement. The girl ate no dinner. It was late before she heard the silver tinkle that sounded, in her ears, like the crack of doom. It was well her grandmother bade her, with a gesture, to sit down. Her quaking knees would hardly have borne her, standing. "I’m a coward! A poor, weak coward!" she confessed to herself bitterly, resenting her weakness, yet apparently powerless to control it. "I’ve been thinking over what you told me, and I have concluded to change my tactics with regard to you," the old woman plunged in, without preamble. "Perhaps I’ve made a mistake in the past, keeping from you things you should have known. All I can say is, I acted in good faith, for your best." Katherine smiled faintly. "Isn’t that what parents always say when they punish?" Madam Crewe raised her chin in her old supercilious manner, then quickly lowered it. "I don’t know. I’ve had no experience. I never punished. Perhaps that is where I made my mistake." Again Katherine’s lips curled slightly in a wry smile. "You need have no regrets there, grandmother. You have nothing to make up to me on that score." "You mean I have punished you?" "Oh—very thoroughly." "Curious! I can’t see myself doing it." "I can’t see you _not_ doing it!" Madam Crewe, in her turn, stared, surprised. Katherine was acting out of all character, in quite a new, unaccountable fashion. "I suppose I must take your word for it," her grandmother admitted with an odd sigh. "Be kind enough not to interrupt. You know the story of the man I did not marry. Now you shall hear the story of the man I did marry. "My father took me abroad after—after the Ballard fiasco. I did not care where I went, what I did. I was quite broken down. Quite, as Slawson would say, ’broken up.’ Nothing made any difference to me. Everything was distasteful.