think? They would suspect something merely from her expression. She looked—she looked”—he hesitated—“like some one walking in her sleep.”
To Cassandra the significant thing was that Katharine had gone out without telling her, and she interpreted this to mean that she had gone out to meet Ralph Denham. But to her surprise William drew no comfort from this probability.
“Once throw conventions aside,” he began, “once do the things that people don’t do—” and the fact that you are going to meet a young man is no longer proof of anything, except, indeed, that people will talk.
Cassandra saw, not without a pang of jealousy, that he was extremely solicitous that people should not talk about Katharine, as if his interest in her were still proprietary rather than friendly. As they were both ignorant of Ralph’s visit the night before they had not that reason to comfort themselves with the thought that matters were hastening to a crisis. These absences of Katharine’s, moreover, left them exposed to interruptions which almost destroyed their pleasure in being alone together. The rainy evening made it impossible to go out; and, indeed, according to William’s code, it was considerably more damning to be seen out of doors than surprised within. They were so much at the mercy of bells and doors that they could hardly talk of Macaulay with any conviction, and William preferred to defer the second act of his tragedy until another day.
Under these circumstances Cassandra showed herself at her best. She sympathized with William’s anxieties and did her utmost to share them; but still, to be alone together, to be running risks together, to be partners in the wonderful conspiracy, was to her so enthralling that she was always forgetting discretion, breaking out into exclamations and admirations which finally made William
