The swift transition from relief to their former state of suspense was marked, and their feelings found an outlet in a sudden nervous movement of hands and feet. The town had given her rather a hard deal in some ways, all were ready to admit that, but had she felt it? Did she entertain resentment because of it? She looked so young, so feminine, so exquisitely soft that, somehow, they thought not.
Toomey's sallow skin had taken on a saffron shade, and Mrs. Toomey sat with her thin hands clenched in her lap, a strained smile fixed on her face, waiting for--she knew not what.
Turning in his chair, Prentiss laid his hand upon the back of Kate's, and his keen worldly eyes shone with the peculiar satisfaction which human nature finds in its own flesh and blood when it reflects credit upon themselves. Immeasurable pride was in his face as he looked at her.
The miracle of clothes and an altered frame of mind had done wonders for Kate. The austere expression, the tense lines which came from responsibility and unhappiness had been smoothed out, while much of the tan of her years in the open air had vanished in a few weeks in the moist climate of the east. She looked not more than twenty-two or three in the soft glow of the shaded lights, and of the awkward self-conscious girl whom they remembered on that night in this same dining room, there was not a trace.
She had the quiet assurance of authority, the poise of self-reliance and reserve force, but there was not a shade of triumph in her face, at the power with which her father had vested her.
There seemed not to be even heart beats in the tense silence while Kate sat with her eyes downcast, clinking, with her jewelled fingers, a bit of ice against the sides of her drinking glass. Even when she spoke finally she did not look up, but began in a low, even voice: "A fable that I read long ago keeps coming to me to-night--the story of a king, powerful and cruel, who, when his time came to appear before the Great Judge, the single entry in his favor that the Recording Angel could find was the whim which had induced him when walking one day to have a pig that he saw suffering in the gutter put out of its misery.
"The story is applicable in that as I sit here I realize that in all the years I have been among you there is only one," she raised her eyes and indicated Teeters's empty chair, "who ever has done me the smallest disinterested kindness.