JOHN

A LOVE STORY
BY
MRS OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF ‘CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,’ ETC.
VOL. I.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXX
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE

JOHN.

CHAPTER I.

I do not know how to begin this story otherwise than by a confession that I cannot describe its very first scene. It was a scene such as happens very often in romance, and which a great many writers could describe to the life. I know who could do it so well that you would think you saw the accident—the plunge of the frightened horse, the sudden change in the sensations of the rider from voluntary progress on her own part to a gradual confused wild mad rush past of trees and houses and hedgerows, and all the whirling level green of the country round—the flash before her eyes—the jar—the stillness of insensibility. Many writers whom I know could make a great point of it; but I never was run away with by my horse, and I do not know how it feels. Therefore I will begin where the excitement ends, and take up my story from the moment when Kate Crediton opened her eyes, without any notion where she was, with a thousand bells ringing in her ears, and awful shadows of something that had happened or was going to happen flitting about her brain—and by degrees found that she was not on her horse, as she had been when last she had any acquaintance with herself, but lying on a sofa with a sense of wetness and coolness about her head, and the strangest incapacity to move or speak or exercise any energy of her own. She began to hear the voices and to feel the things that were being done to her before she was capable of opening her eyes, or indeed had come to herself. There was a soft plash of water, and sensation as if a sudden shower had come over her face, and then consciousness struggled back, and she began to divine what it was.

“Where am I?” she said, faintly, in her great wonder; and then her father came forward, and with tears in his eyes implored her not to stir or speak. And there was another man who was dimly apparent to her, holding her hand or her pulse or something; and at her feet a pair of anxious, astonished eyes gazing at her, and somebody behind who was sprinkling something fragrant over her head, and shedding the heavy hair off her forehead. She had fainted, and yet somehow had escaped being dead, as she ought to have been. Or was she dead, and were these phantoms that were round her, moving so ghostly, speaking with their voices miles off through the plaintive air? But she could not put the question, though she was so curious. She could not move, though she was the most active, restless little creature possible. All the bells of all the country round were booming dully in her ears; or was it rather a hive of bees that had clustered round her with dull, small, murmurous trumpeting? The mist went and came across her eyes like clouds on the sky, and every time it blew aside there was visible that pair of eyes. Whom did they belong to? or were they only floating there in space, with perhaps a pair of wings attached?—a hypothesis not inconsistent with Kate’s sense that after all she might have died, for anything she could say to the contrary. But the eyes were anxious, puckered up at the corners, with a very intent, disturbed, eager look in them, such as eyes could scarcely have in heaven.

“She will do now,” Kate heard some one say beside her; “let her be kept quite quiet, and not allowed to speak—and you may continue the cold compress on the head. I think it will be best to leave her quite alone with Mrs Mitford. Quiet is of the first consequence. I shall come back again in an hour and see how she is.”

“But, doctor,” said the anxious voice of Mr Crediton, “you don’t think——”

“My dear sir, there is no use in thinking anything just now. I hope she will be all right again this evening; but pray come with me, and leave her quiet. At present we can do no good.”

I do not mean to say that this connected conversation penetrated to the poor little brain which had just received such a shock; but she heard it, and caught the name, Mrs Mitford, out of the mist, and her mind began vaguely to revolve round the new idea so oddly thrown into it. Mrs Mitford?—who was she? The name seemed to get into the murmurs of the bees somehow, and buzz and buzz about her. The big eyes disappeared; the sense of other moving living creatures about her died off into the general hum. But for that, everything now was still, except just one rustle behind her at her head. And sometimes a hand came out of the stillness, and dropped new freshness on her forehead; and once it lingered with a soft half caress, and shed back the hair once more, and there came to her the soft coo of a voice as the buzzing became less loud. Yes; the bees began to hum away to their hives, farther and farther off into the slumberous distance. And this?—was it the wood-pigeons among the bees?

Thus it will be seen that poor Kate had received a considerable shock; but yet, as she was young, and had unfathomable fountains of life and energy to draw from, she had quite come to herself by the evening, as the doctor hoped. Her father was allowed to come in for ten minutes to see her, and almost wept over his child, though that was not by any means his usual frame of mind; and Mrs Mitford emerged from the darkness at the end of the sofa and sat by the side of her charge, and even talked to her sometimes in that voice which was like the wood-pigeon’s coo. But who was she? and whose were those two eyes which had floated in the curious cloudy darkness? Perhaps it was because of the general state of confusion in which she found herself that Kate’s mind was so occupied with those eyes, thinking whom they could belong to, and who Mrs Mitford could be, who was taking charge of her so simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As the evening darkened, an uncomfortable sense that she ought to get up and get ready to go home came over her. And she did not want to go home. To lie there quite still, full of dreamy wonderings, which were half pleasant, half confusing, seemed all she was fit for. The very idea of raising herself, of putting her foot on the ground, seemed to bring back all those buzzing bees—and yet night was coming on, and that of course would be the necessary thing to do.

It was almost dark when, for the second time, her father came to the side of her sofa. He came very softly, and hushed her when she first attempted to speak. “Not a word, my darling,” he said—“not a word; you must not talk.”

“But I must,” said Kate, though even her own voice sounded at least five miles off. “Papa, must not I get up and go home?”

“You are not able,” he said, stooping over and kissing her. “Don’t trouble yourself about that. Mrs Mitford has promised to take charge of you till you are better. You must lie quite quiet, and not think of anything till you get well.”

“I am—pretty well,” said Kate, “and who is Mrs——?” She stopped, for there was a shadow behind Mr Crediton, who could only be Mrs Mitford herself, and Kate’s sense of courtesy was not gone, though she was so strangely confused. Then she gave a little exclamation of surprise. “I am still in my habit,” she said, with vague wonder, “though it is almost night!”

“We are going to get you out of your habit presently, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford. “Say good-night to your father, for we must send him away. You will soon know who I am, and all about it; but you must not talk to-night.”

And then, before she knew how, she was released from her warm clinging dress, and laid, all white and fresh and cool, in a cool, soft, shaded bed, where the confusion gradually deepened round her. Kate could have vowed she had never slept at all, but had been all the while sensible of the strangeness and stillness of the place—of now and then a sound and touch that felt like the embodiment of the silence—of a faint glimmer of light in the darkness—of sometimes a wandering breath of air, as if the window had been opened; and the sense of some one by her all the while. But yet, no doubt, she must have slept; for it became apparent to her all at once that day had returned—that the morning air was coming in, and the whole dim chamber was flooded through and through with light,—light which was not sunshine, and yet looked like the essence of sunshine. She seemed to herself to look up all at once out of the soft darkness which had prevented her from identifying anything, to see this daylight room all bright and clear, with its pictures and its furniture, and a bright-faced soft-eyed woman who stood by her bed-side, no longer a shadow among the shadows. Such soft eyes, though they were no longer young, a complexion so softly, sweetly tinted, a look that caressed every young creature it rested upon:—If this was Mrs Mitford, it was very pleasant to be left in her charge. She had a little tray in her hands, white-covered, with fragrant tea and delicate bits of dry toast. Kate, not knowing how it was that she had woke so suddenly to this pleasant spectacle, tried to start up, with her usual impetuosity, but fell back again immediately, with her head all buzzing and confused, as it had been on the previous night.

“Oh dear! what is the matter with me?” cried Kate, so much overwhelmed by her sensations that she forgot civility.

“Nothing very much, I hope, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford; “but you are not well enough to jump up like that. You had a bad fall yesterday; but you have slept so well all night——”

“Oh no—I think not,” protested Kate; and then it suddenly occurred to her how ungrateful she was. “I am sure you were sitting up with me,” she said. “It is so very good of you; and I don’t even know—my head is so strange.”

“You shall hear all about it in time,” said her cheerful nurse. “You have only to keep quiet, that is all, and take some tea, and be content to be an invalid. Is that hard? But it might have been so much worse; and oh! we have such reason to be thankful, my dear!”

Kate did not say anything, but she gazed so, throwing all her awe-stricken thoughts into her eyes, that the kind woman answered the thought as if it had been spoken.

“Yes, you might have been killed—and my John too. Thank God, you are both safe! But you must not ask any more questions. You must let me settle your pillows for you, and try to take some tea.”

“My John!” who was that? another mysterious new being in this world of darkness. Kate gazed imploringly at her new friend, whom she had identified and made out. But Mrs Mitford’s attention was fixed on the pillows, which she piled up cunningly behind the patient to support her. “Is that comfortable?” she asked. “It does not make you giddy to sit up like that? and here is your breakfast, and a rose with the dew on it from my—from the garden,” she added, after a little momentary pause. Kate’s mind was very much confused, it is true, but still her woman’s wit had not so much deserted her but that she could make out that broken sentence. It was “my John,” no doubt, that her friend had been about to say, and why then could not she say it without hesitation? An involuntary smile stole over Kate’s face; she put up the rose to hide this smile, taking in all its freshness and dewiness and perfume into her young being. Evidently John was not without discrimination—and Kate, we are obliged to confess, was the kind of girl to like the rose all the better coming to her in this half-mysterious way, than if Mrs Mitford had but gathered it in the garden as she took her morning walk.

“It is very sweet; and it is so kind of—you, to bring it me,” said Kate, with a little gleam of habitual mischief waking in her pretty eyes. “But oh! my head feels so strange, I can’t make it out.”

“Perhaps you had better not talk any more, but lie down again as soon as you have had your tea,” said Mrs Mitford; and she only smiled upon Kate’s further attempts to enter into conversation, and shook her head. When the little tray had been removed, and the pillows lowered, Kate was left with her rose, in a not unwilling quiet. After all, curious though she was, she did not feel able to talk: her head still felt, as she said, very strange. The bees were not so far off but what they were ready to come back when she stirred. On the whole, it was best to lie back and keep quite still, and watch her nurse moving about the room. She had a grey alpaca gown, which shone with pretty reflets like silk, but did not rustle to vex the invalid’s nerves; and a little white cap that set off her soft rose-tints. Kate lay and wondered how she had managed to keep that lovely soft complexion—and then why she wore a cap, which so few people do nowadays. Certainly Mrs Mitford had no need to wear it; she had plenty of hair, though it was beginning to be touched by grey, and Kate was sufficiently a young woman of her time to know that no hair now needs to grow grey unless its owner chooses. And then she wondered how old Mrs Mitford was. She might not have been any more than forty, and yet she might be ten years older than that—it was hard to say. She went about softly, not quite noiselessly, which is as hurtful to the nerves as boisterousness, but with just sound enough to make you aware she was there. And it was so nice, Kate thought, to have her there. Her pretty rose ribbons, which brightened the grey dress, were not so pretty as the softer roses on her cheeks. Kate was all lilies and roses herself, and she could not but gaze with a sympathetic admiration at the woman so much older than herself, who still retained this special loveliness. She looked like Methuselah to Kate, and yet she was so pretty. “Shall I be as pretty, I wonder, when I am as old?” the girl asked herself; and once more was surprised by a smile at the quaint, strange, incomprehensible thought. Kate Crediton fifty, but still possessed of a pretty complexion, and considered a nice-looking woman of her age! The idea was so odd that into the quietness there bubbled up a little sudden fountain of laughter, of which, as soon as she heard it, Kate was so infinitely ashamed, that even her rose did not suffice to hide the colour which blazed up into her cheeks.

“Laughing, my dear!” said Mrs Mitford, though not without a little anxiety, drawing near the bed. “What has amused you?” And she came quite close, and touched Kate’s forehead softly with her hand, and gazed at her, with just a touch of dread lest her mind was wandering, which the girl guessed somehow, and which instantly sobered her thoughts.

“I was thinking how funny it is to be lying here so comfortable, and you taking care of me as if I belonged to you, and not to know where I am, nor—anything about it. It is all so queer.”

“It is not half so queer as you think,” said Mrs Mitford, smiling; “you will find it is quite natural when you are a little better. But we must not talk till the doctor comes. He gave orders you were to be kept perfectly quiet. Perhaps he will relax when he sees how well you are, if you keep quite quiet now.”

“When will he come!” said Kate, with a sigh of impatience; and then in her hasty way she put up her face, as well as she was able, to her kind nurse. “I wonder if mamma was like you,” cried the motherless creature, with a few tears which came as suddenly as the laughter. It was Kate’s way; but Mrs Mitford did not know that, and was wonderfully touched, and kissed her, and bathed her face, and smoothed her hair, and did a hundred little tender offices for her, making her “nice,” as an invalid should look.

“My hair was much the same colour when I was your age, and I had just such heaps of it,” the kind woman said, combing out and caressing those great shining coils.

“I shall be just the same-looking woman when I am old,” was the comment Kate made to herself; and the thought almost made her laugh again. But this time she had warning of the inclination, and restrained herself; and thus the morning wore away.

When the doctor came he pronounced her a great deal better, and Kate lay wondering, and listened with all her ears to the conversation that went on in hushed tones near her bed-side. “Not light-headed at all?” said the doctor; “not talking nonsense?” “And oh,” cried Kate to herself, “if I did not talk nonsense, it is the first time in all my life!” “Oh no, she has been quite rational—quite herself,” said Mrs Mitford; and Kate, exercising intense self-control, did not laugh. If she had ever been called rational before, it would not have been so hard; and how little they must know about her! “It is rather nice to be considered sensible,” she said within herself; but she could not suppress the laughing mischief in her eye, which the doctor perceived when he turned round to feel her pulse again.

“She looks as if she were laughing at us all,” he said. “Miss Crediton, tell me do you feel quite well? able to get up this moment and ride home?”

“I am very well when I lie still,” said Kate; “but I don’t want to go home, please. She is not at home; I am obliged to call her she, which is very uncivil, because nobody will tell me her name.”

“I can do that much for you,” said the doctor. “This is Mrs Mitford of Fanshawe Regis; and I can tell you you were in luck to be run away with close to her door.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” said Kate. “Please, Mrs Mitford, will you kiss me, now we are introduced? I am Kate Crediton—perhaps you know; and I am sure I don’t know why I did not talk nonsense all last night, for they say I always do at home.”

“But you must not here,” said the doctor, who was an old man, and smiled at her kindly,—“nor chatter at all, indeed, for several days. See how it brings the blood to her face! If you will be very good you may see your father, and ask—let me see—six questions; but not one word more.”

“Is papa still here?” cried Kate.

“That is one,” said the doctor; “be careful, or you will come to the end of your list, as the man in the fairy tale came to the end of his wishes. He is waiting to come in.”

“Have I only five left?” said Kate. “Please, let him come in. I shall ask him how it all happened; and then I shall ask him where we are—that is three; and when he is going home; and what is the matter with me that I must lie here—and then——” She had been counting on her fingers, and paused with the forefinger of one hand resting on the little finger of the other. Mrs Mitford had gone to the door to admit Mr Crediton, and Kate was alone with the old doctor, who looked at her so kindly. She laid back her head among the pillows, a little flushed by talking; her pretty hair, which Mrs Mitford had just smoothed, had begun to ruffle up again in light little puffs of curls. She lay back, looking up at the doctor like a certain Greuze I know of, with fingers like bits of creamy pink shells, half transparent, doing their bit of calculation. “And then,” she added, with a long-drawn breath, half of mischief, half of fatigue, “I will ask him who is ‘my John’?”

“Has she been talking to you about my John?” said the doctor, amused; and Kate gave a little nod of her pretty head at him, where she lay back like a rosebud upon the pillows. It was too late to answer in words, for Mrs Mitford was coming back from the door, followed by Mr Crediton, who looked excited and anxious, and had something like a tear in the corner of his eyes.

“Well, my pet, so you are better!” he said. “That is right, Kate. I have had a most miserable night, doctor, thinking of her. But now I hear it’s going to be all right. It is not, of course, for any special virtue in her,” he said, turning round to them with a strained little laugh when he had kissed her, “but one has all sorts of prejudices about one’s only child.”

“Yes, indeed. I know very well what it is to have an only child,” said Mrs Mitford. “You could not find more sympathy anywhere in that particular. When there is anything the matter with my boy, the whole world is turned upside down.”

Kate looked at the doctor with an inquiring glance, and he gave her a little confidential nod. The eyes of the young girl and the old man laughed and communicated while the two foolish parents were making their mutual confessions. “Is that my John she is speaking of?” asked Kate’s eyes; and the doctor replied merrily, delighted with his observing patient. To be sure there had been a grave enough moment on the previous day, when these two lives first crossed each other; but this was how the idea of him was formally introduced to Kate Crediton’s mind. It was a foolish, flighty, light, little mind, thinking of nothing but fun and nonsense. Yet even now it did cross the doctor’s mind, with a momentary compunction, that the business might turn out serious enough for poor John.

CHAPTER II.

It was nearly a week before Kate was permitted to leave her bed, and during that time she had learned a great deal about the economy of Fanshawe Regis. She lay among the pillows every day a little higher, with her natural colour coming back, looking more and more like the Greuze, and listened to all the domestic revelations that flowed from Mrs Mitford’s lips. The kind woman was pleased with so lively a listener, and thus there gradually unrolled itself before Kate a moving panorama of another existence, which the girl, perhaps, had not sufficient imagination or sympathy to enter fully into, but which interested her much in bits, and amused her, and to which she lent a very willing ear. Sometimes the door of the room would be opened, and Kate would hear the footsteps in the house of which she was now a recognised inmate, but which she knew nothing of. There was one solemn step that creaked and went slowly, gravely, up and down stairs, as if life were a weighty ceremonial to be accomplished very seriously, which was evidently the step of Dr Mitford, the Rector of Fanshawe Regis, and rural dean; and there was a lighter springy masculine foot, which came to the very door sometimes with flowers and letters and books for the invalid, and which Kate did not need to be told was “my John.” In the languor of her illness, and in the absence of other objects of interest, this step became quite important to Kate. She was not, we are obliged to confess, by any means a very good young woman. She was a spoiled child, and she had been born a flirt, which could scarcely be said to be her fault. From three years old to nineteen, which was her present age, it had been the occupation of her existence to prey upon mankind. Whether it was sugar-plums she played for or hearts had not mattered very much to her. She had put forth her wiles, her smiles, her thousand little fascinations, with a spontaneous, almost unconscious, instinct. It was necessary to her to be pleasing somebody—to be first in some one’s regard, whoever that some one might be. Before she had been half a day under Mrs Mitford’s care, that good soul was her slave; and when that innocent little bit of captivation was complete, and when the doctor, too, showed symptoms of having put on her chains, Kate felt her hands free, and longed for the hunting-grounds and the excitement of the sport. John was the most likely victim, and yet she could not get at him, being chained up here out of reach. It filled her invalid existence with a little touch of excitement. She sent him pretty messages in return for his roses, and listened to all his mother’s stories of him. Not that John in himself interested the girl. He was her natural victim, that was all, and she smiled with a vague satisfaction at thought of the mischief which she knew she could do.

The life she lived in her room in this strange house of which she knew nothing, yet with which she was so familiar, was the strangest amusing episode to Kate. After the first two days Mrs Mitford kept by her less closely, and a fresh country housemaid, full of wonder and sympathy and admiration for the pretty young lady, came into the room as soon as she was awake to put it in order for the day. Lizzie had a round fresh apple-blossom face which pleased Kate’s eye, and was full of that wondering worship for the creature so like herself in age and nature, so infinitely above her in other matters, possessed of so many incomprehensible fascinations and refinements, which one young woman so often entertains for another. There had been great calculations in the kitchen about Kate’s probable age and her beauty, the colour of her hair, the shape of her hat, her father’s wealth, and everything about her. The cook at Fanshawe Regis came from Camelford, where Mr Crediton lived, and knew that his bank was the Bank of England to all the country round, and that he was rolling in money, and spared nothing on his only child. Lizzie had listened with open eyes to all the details her fellow-servant knew, or could recollect or invent, of the fairy existence of this wonderful young lady. About twenty, cook concluded Miss Crediton was—and Lizzie was just over twenty. And she too had blue eyes like Kate, and apple-blossom cheeks, and was about the same height—but yet what a difference! “You’ve seen Miss Parsons as was her maid—a stuck-up thing with her fine bonnets; her mother keeps a millinery shop down Thistle-field way, leading out o’ Camelford,” said cook. “She was lady’s-maid to this Miss Crediton, and a fine thing for her too. She might take a fancy to you, Liz, if you were to flatter her a bit.” “Laws, I never dare open my lips,” said Lizzie; “she’ll lie there a-noticing everything with them eyes, as looks you through and through. Them as is no skolards has no chance.” But Lizzie’s heart beat as the morning came, and she went softly into Miss Crediton’s room, and set the windows open, and dusted and settled and put everything to rights. Kate watched her, saying nothing at first, not without a little natural interest on her side in the young woman of her own age, in all the roundness, and softness, and whiteness, and rosiness of youth. She saw the girl’s awe-stricken looks at herself, and was amused, and even a little flattered, by Lizzie’s admiration,—and being weary of silence, began to draw her out. It was chiefly from Lizzie’s account that Kate identified all the movements of the house, and found out the hours at which Mrs Mitford visited the schools, and when she went to see her poor people. “When she leaves you, miss, to have a little rest after your dinner, it’s time for the school,” said Lizzie. “Missis never misses a day, not so long as I can remember, except now and again, when Mr John’s been ill.”

“Is Mr John often ill?” said Kate.

“Oh no, miss; never, so to speak; but missis makes an idol of him. Mother thinks as she makes too much an idol on him. He’s her only son, like—it aint like having nine or ten, as most folks have,” said Lizzie, apologetically, as she arranged the little table by Kate’s bed-side, where there was, as usual, a bouquet of John’s roses, freshly gathered.

“That is true,” said Kate, with a laugh which Lizzie could not understand.

“But I’d rather have one like Mr John, than a dozen like most folks,” Lizzie added, with energy; “most of ’em in the village is nought but trouble to them they belongs to. It’s hard to tell of ’em what they’re made for, them big lads. One’ll go poaching and idling, till ye don’t know what to do with ’um; and another ’ll list, and break his folks’s hearts. Mother says they’re a cross, but I think as they’re worse than a cross—drinking, and fighting, and quarrelling, and never good for nought. And them as is steady goes away, and you don’t get no good o’ them. You may laugh, miss, as don’t know no better—but there are folks as can’t laugh.”

“I did not laugh, Lizzie,” said Kate. “I am very sorry—but why are you so serious about it? I hope the girls are better than the lads.”

“Mother says we’ve haven’t got the same temptations,” said Lizzie, dubiously; “but she’s old, you know, miss, and I dare to say she don’t think on. I’ve got four brothers, all idler the one nor the other. And if I don’t know, I don’ know who should. Mother she’s a good woman, and I hope we’ll all pass for her sake—but missis, she never hears a cross word from Mr John.”

“A cross word, indeed!” said Kate; “that would be unpardonable—and she such a darling. He ought to be proud of having a mother like that. I am very fond of her myself.”

“He’s as proud as Punch, miss,” said Lizzie, “and missis she’s proud of him. When he’s at home he’s always by to walk wi’ her and talk with her. Master, he’s that learned ye never know what to make of him. They say as he’s the biggest scholard in all Huntingshire. It aint to be expected as he would just take his little walks, and make it pleasant like a common man.”

“And what does Mrs Mitford do when Mr John is away?” said Kate, a little doubtful of the propriety of asking so many questions, but too curious to let the opportunity slip.

“Oh, miss! it’s dreadful, that is,” cried Lizzie. “It’s enough to make you cry just to look at her face. Some days she’ll go across to the school as many as three times—and down to the village among all the poor folks. Mother aint Church like me, miss,” the girl continued, with a little apologetic curtsy; “she was born like in Zion, she says, and she can’t make up her mind not to leave it; and it aint to be expected as poor missis should be fond of Zion folks. But when any of the lads are in trouble she never minds church nor chapel. Mother says she’s a bit proud as her own lad is one as never gets into no trouble—and the like of him haven’t got the same temptations, mother says. But I always say as it’s kind of missis, all the same.”

“I should think so, indeed,” cried Kate, “and I think your mother must be——” she was going to say a disagreeable old woman, but stopped in time—“rather hard upon other people,” she went on, diplomatically; “but then if Mr John goes away altogether, I am afraid Mrs Mitford will break her heart.”

“Oh, miss, don’t you be afeared,” cried Lizzie, with bright confidence—“he aint going away. It sounds funny, but he’s going to be the new curate, is Mr John.”

“Oh!!” Kate gave a little cry of disappointment and dismay. “Is he a clergyman? I never thought of that.”

“Not yet, miss,” said Lizzie, “but they say as he’s going up to the bishop at Michaelmas or thereabouts, and then we’ll have him here for curate, and missis will be as glad as glad.”

“I am sure I am not glad,” said Kate to herself, pouting over this unlooked-for piece of news. Not that she cared for John. She had never seen him, how could she care? He had saved her life, people said, but then that was the most fantastic beginning of an acquaintance, like a thing in a novel, and she would rather have seen no more of him ever after, had that been all. But Kate had become interested in my John by dint of hearing his step, and receiving his roses, and knowing him to be her natural victim. And that he should be a clergyman spoilt all. Curates, of course, are always fair game—but then an effective young sportswoman like Kate Crediton can bag curates with so little trouble. Facility, let us say, after the fashion of the copybooks, breeds contempt. And, on the other hand, light-minded as she was, she felt that a clergyman, as distinct from a curate, was a thing that called for respect—and felt herself suddenly pulled up and brought to a pause in all her projects for amusement. How provoking it was! if he had been going to be a soldier, or a barrister, or an—anything except a clergyman! She could not, for Mrs Mitford’s sake, treat him on the ground of simple curatedom; nor would she beguile him from his serious intentions, and wound his mother, who had been so good to her. A clergyman! a being either ready to fall a too ready victim, or a martyr, whom to interfere with would be sacrilege. Kate was thoroughly contrariée. She felt that fortune was against her, and that this was a climax to the misfortunes which hitherto had sat so very lightly upon her. To be thrown from her horse and half-killed—to find herself an inmate of a strange house which she had never heard of before—to be introduced into a new world altogether, with the most delicious sense of novelty and strangeness—and all to find herself at last face to face with a clergyman! Kate could not understand what could be meant by such a waste of means for so miserable an end. “I might have been killed,” she said to herself, “and he only a clergyman all the time!” She was, in short, disgusted at once with her ill fortune and her foolish dreams. She talked no more to Lizzie, but fell back on her pillows, and pushed the roses away with her hand. Mrs Mitford had deceived her, John had deceived her. To think she should really have been getting up a little romance on the subject, and he to turn out only a clergyman after all! When John’s mother returned to the room, after giving him a full account of her patient, along with his breakfast, and reanimating by her son’s interest her own warm glow of sympathy for the invalid, she was quite disturbed by the pucker on Kate’s brow. “Dear me! I am afraid you have been doing too much,” she said, anxiously, bending over the bed. “I have a little headache, that is all,” said Kate, whose temper was affected. And Mrs Mitford shook her head, and took immediate action. She had the blinds all drawn down again which Lizzie had drawn up, and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne all over Kate, and laid aside her own work, which required light, and with her knitting in her hand instead, placed herself in the shade, and said “hush” to every word her patient addressed to her. “Quiet and darkness,” she said, softly; “hush, my dear—there is nothing like darkness and quiet—I always find them effectual.” Poor Kate had to make the best of it. Instead of going on with her new novel, and chattering to her heart’s content, she had to lie silent and shut her eyes, and be content with the eau-de-Cologne; which, after all, though he was but a clergyman, was less interesting than John.

It was a great event to Kate, and also to the kitchen at Fanshawe Regis, when “Miss Parsons” came from Camelford with her young mistress’s “things.” Kate had never been ill in her life before, and she had not been very ill or suffering much even now, so that the feeling of state and dignity and superiority to the rest of the world was unmixed by any severe reminiscence of pain. It gave her quite a thrill of pleasure to see her pretty dresses again. She had been allowed to get up to lie on the sofa by the window, and look out at the roses, but only in her dressing-gown, which was very pretty, no doubt, and very cool, but not so pleasant as all those fresh summer costumes with their floating ribbons. She lay on her sofa, and watched Parsons unpack them with lively interest. “But I should like to know what you mean me to do with them all,” she said. “Here are enough for all the summer; and how long do you suppose I am going to stay? Perhaps a week—there are a dozen gowns at least.”

“I did not know which you would like, miss,” said Parsons; “nor if you might be tempted to stay. It’s so pretty all about, and they’re all so fond of you——”

“Fond of me!” said Kate, with a sudden blush, which surprised herself intensely. “You goose! nobody has seen me but Mrs Mitford—and she will be very glad to get rid of so much trouble, I should think.”

“Ah, miss! as if some folks didn’t know better than that,” said Parsons; which confounded Kate so that she made no answer, but paused to reflect whether the girl was mad, or if she could mean anything. John had seen her, it was true, though she had not seen him. He had saved her life; he had kept sending her roses all the time. And, no doubt, it is quite possible that a man (poor creature!) might be struck at first sight, and never get the better of it all his life after. The suggestion made her smile for one moment, and then filled her with a certain contempt for John.

“Please finish your unpacking as soon as you can,” she said, with severe politeness, to Parsons. “Take out half—that will do. I stay here a week only. And make haste, please, for I am tired of all this fuss.”

“Now they’ve come,” said Parsons, doggedly, “they’d best be unpacked; and if you was to change your mind——”

“Be quiet, please, and get done and go away,” cried Kate. “You will make me ill again, if you don’t mind.”

And then, considerably ruffled and put out, she turned her head to the window. Mrs Mitford had scrupulously kept “the gentlemen"—her husband and her son—out of the flower-garden, on which Kate’s windows looked. She did not think a young lady in a dressing-gown a fit spectacle for any eyes but her own; but Kate was almost well, and her hostess had relaxed a little. As she looked out now she saw through the venetian blinds two figures in the distance walking slowly along a sheltered walk. It could only be John whom his mother was leading on in that way. Her head was almost resting against his arm as she looked up and talked to him. She leant upon him with that pleasant sense of support and help which makes weakness sweet; there was even in her attitude a something which Kate perceived dimly by instinct, but could not have put in words; that delicious sense of surprise, and secret, sacred, humorous consciousness of the wonder there was in it—the sweet jest of being thus supported by her baby, her child, he whom she had carried in her arms—was it yesterday?—which a man’s mother enjoys privately all to herself. Somehow a little envy stole over Kate as she looked at them. She was very fond of her father; but yet it was not such happiness to be with him as it was for this other woman to be with her boy. The young creature thirsting for everything that was sweetest in life would have liked to have that too. To be sure she could not be John’s mother, or anybody’s mother, and would have laughed with inextinguishable laughter at herself for the thought, had she realised it. But still she envied Mrs Mitford, feeling that kind woman to have thus appropriated a joy beyond her reach—and what do women want with joys at that age? Should not all be concentrated in one sweetest draught for the rose lips, so dewy and soft with youth? Kate would have repudiated such a sentiment, of course; and yet this was what breathed unconsciously in her heart. She went to bed with a little spiteful feeling against Mrs Mitford. Had not she made a clergyman of her boy on purpose to spite Kate? If he had been a gravedigger his mother would loved him just the same; it would have made no difference to her. If he had been ugly, and weakly, and half his size, his mother would have liked him quite as well; which were all so many offences against Kate, and evidences of her inferiority. She wanted to have her own delights and the other woman’s delights too. She wanted to be young and to be old; to have a lover’s adoration and a son’s worship, and every other variety that love can take. It so spited her that she cried when she went to bed, and then burst out laughing at her own folly, and was as silly as you can conceive it possible to be—perhaps more silly than after nineteen any one could conceive.

Next day, after Lizzie had put the room in order, and Mrs Mitford had paid her after-breakfast visit, and gone off to the village to see some of her poor people, it occurred to Kate to try her own strength. Her father was coming to dinner at the Rectory that day, and it had been arranged that she was to be up in the evening to see him. But when all was quiet in the house, Mrs Mitford out, the doctor not expected, and Parsons at hand, who was not likely to thwart her mistress, Kate formed a different plan for herself. She had her dresses taken out, just to look at them. After being in a dressing-gown for a week, the charms of a real dress, something that fits, is wonderful. Kate gave a contemptuous glance at her white wrapper, as she gazed at all those pretty garments, and then she glanced at herself in the glass opposite, with her hair all loosely bundled up under her net. What a guy she looked, lying there so long, as if she had had a fever! “A good thing they did not bethink themselves of cutting off my hair,” she said, under her breath; and could not but ask herself with horror whether all the eau-de-Cologne that had been lavished on her head, and all the showers of water, would affect her hair disadvantageously. She might as well take it out of the net at least, and let Parsons dress it. When this was done, Kate felt her courage rise. She sprang up from her sofa, frightening the maid. “I am going to dress—I must dress—I can’t bear this thing five minutes longer!” she cried.

“Oh, miss! you’ll catch your death,” cried Parsons, not indeed knowing why, but delivering the first missile of offence that came to her hand. But Parsons was far from being a person of spirit, or able to cope with her young mistress. She stood helplessly by, protesting, but making no effort to resist, except the passive one of giving no assistance. Kate flew at her dress with a sense of novelty which gave it an additional charm. She buttoned herself into it with a certain delight. “Oh, how nice it is to feel one has something on!” she cried, tossing her wrapper to the other side of the room; and she fastened her belt, and tied her ribbons, and did everything for herself with a sweep of enthusiasm. The reader has only seen her as an invalid, and Kate was very well worth looking at. She was a little over the middle height; her figure was very slender and pliant and graceful—upright, yet bending as if with every breeze. Her hair was warm sunny brown hair; her eyes were dark-violet blue, large, and limpid, and full of a startled sweetness, like the eyes of a fawn. They had the child’s look of surprise at the fair world and wonderful beings among which it finds itself, which has always so great a charm; and with that blue ribbon in her pretty hair, and the clear blue muslin dress, she was like a flower. And then she had that glory of complexion which we are so fond of claiming as specially English. Nothing could be more delicate or more lovely than the gradations of colour in her face—her lips a rich rose, her cheeks a little paler—a soft rose-reflection upon her delicate features and white throat. It was not “the perfect woman nobly planned” which came to your mind at sight of so pretty a creature. She was a Greuze—an article of luxury, worth quantities of money, and always delightful to look at—an ornament to any chamber, the stateliest or the simplest. She might have been placed in a palace or in a cottage, and would not have looked out of place in either; and there was enough beauty in her to decorate the place at once, and make up for all lack of colour or loveliness besides. But what she might have beyond the qualities of the Greuze the spectator could not tell. What harm or good she might have it in her to do—what might be the result even of this first unexpected appearance of hers in the house which she had taken by storm—it was impossible to predict. It could not but be either for good or evil; but, looking into the lovely, flower-like face, into her surprised sweet eyes, the most keen observer would have been baffled. She was full of childish delight in the novelty—a half-mischievous, half-innocent pleasure in the anticipation of producing some effect in the quiet unsuspicious house; but that was all that could be made out. She stood before the glass for a minute contemplating her perfected toilette with the highest satisfaction. She looked like a wreath of that lovely evanescent convolvulus, which is blue and white and rose all at once. “Am I nice?” she said to the bewildered Parsons; who replied only by a bewildered exclamation of “Oh, miss!” and then Kate turned, poising herself for one moment on her heel in uncertainty. She took one of John’s roses and placed it in her belt; and then, with a little wave of her handkerchief, and, as it were, flourish of trumpets, she opened her door and stepped forth into the unknown.

Here let us pause for a moment. To step for the first time into a new country is thrilling to the inexperienced traveller; but to put your foot into a new house,—a place which is utterly strange to you, and yet which you are free to penetrate through as if it were your own—to take your chance of stumbling against people whom you know intimately and yet have no acquaintance with—to set out on a voyage of discovery into the most intimate domestic shrines, with no light but that of your own genius to guide you,—is more thrilling still. Kate stepped briskly over the threshold of her own room, and then she paused aghast at her own audacity. The cold silence of the unknown hushed her back as if she had been on an expedition into the arctic regions. She paused, and her heart gave a loud beat. Should she retire into the ascertained and lawful place from which Parsons was watching with a face of consternation, or should she go on? But no! never!—put it in Parson’s power to taunt her with a retreat—that could not be! She gave another little wave of her handkerchief, as if it had been her banner, and went on.

But it must be avowed that when she was out of sight of Parsons and her own room, Kate paused again and panted, and clung to the banisters, looking down the broad, handsome staircase. She could see down into the hall, with all its closed doors, looking so silent, so strange, so suggestive. She did not know what she would find there; and nobody knew her or expected her. A distant sound from the kitchen, Lizzie’s hearty, youthful laugh, struck with a consolatory sound upon her ear. But alas! she was not bound to the kitchen, where she had friends, but to investigate those closed doors, with such wonders as might be within. She clung to the great polished oak banister for a moment, feeling her heart beat; and then, “courage!” cried Kate, and launched herself into the unknown world below stairs.

CHAPTER III.

The Rectory at Fanshawe Regis was a very good house. Indeed it was the old manor-house of the Fanshawes, which had been thus appropriated at the time when the great castle was built, which had eventually ruined the race. Dr Mitford and his son were both in the library on the morning of Kate’s descent. It was the most picturesque room in the house. It was, indeed, a kind of double room, one end of it being smaller than the other, and contracted by two pillars which stood out at a little distance from the walls, and looked almost like a doorway to the larger end, which was the Doctor’s especial domain. It was clothed with books from ceiling to floor, and the contraction made by the pillars framed in the apartment behind, giving a certain aspect of distance to the fine interior. There was a great old-fashioned fireplace at the very end, with a projecting oak canopy, also supported by pillars, and to the right of that a broad, deeply recessed Elizabethan window, throwing a full side light upon the Doctor’s writing-table, at which he sat absorbed, with his fine white head shining as in a picture. When Kate opened the door cautiously and looked in at this picture, she was so moved by a sense of her own temerity, and by involuntary, half-childish fright lest she should be scolded or punished for it, that it was at least a minute before she took in the scene before her; and even then she did not take it all in. She never even glanced at the foreground—at the other Elizabethan window, with coloured shields of painted glass obscuring the sunshine, in which sat another reader, who raised his eyes at the sound of the opening door with a surprise which it would be difficult to describe. There were three of them all in the same room, and none was aware of the scrutiny with which each was severally regarded. It was like a scene in a comedy. Kate peeping frightened at the door, growing a little bolder as she perceived herself unnoticed, gazing at Dr Mitford’s white head over his books and papers, and gradually getting to see the fun of it, and calculate on his start of amazement when he should look up and see her. And opposite to her, in the anteroom, John Mitford at his table, with eyes in which a kindred laughter began to gleam, one hand resting upon his open book, arrested in his work, his looks bent upon the pretty spy, who was as unconscious of his presence as his father was of hers. When John stirred in his seat and suddenly directed Kate’s attention to him, she gave a little jump and a cry, and turned round and fled in her amazement. She did not even take time to look and recognise him, but flew from the door, letting it swing after her in a sudden panic. She had found the position very amusing when she was peeping at his unsuspecting father—but to be spied upon in her turn! Kate burst away and fled, taking the first passage she saw. “What’s that, eh?” cried Dr Mitford. “I’ll go and see, sir,” said John, dutifully; and he got up with beautiful promptitude, and followed the runaway. He saw the gleam of her blue dress down the passage, and followed her before she could draw breath. It was the most curious meeting, for two well-bred persons who did not know each other, and yet were already so deeply connected with each other. Kate, all one desperate blush, turned round when she heard his step and faced him, trembling with shame and fear, and a little weakness—for this violent exercise was not quite in accordance with her weak condition. She scorned to run away farther, and clutched at such remnants of dignity as she could muster. “Mr John Mitford, I am sure,” she said, making him a stately little curtsy, and swallowing at once her fright and her laughter as best she could.

“I am so glad to see you down-stairs,” said John. The mirth went out of his face when he saw her embarrassment. “Come into the drawing-room and rest—it is the coolest room in the house,” he added, opening the door. It was very good of him, Kate felt; but she burst into a peal of nervous laughter as soon as she had got into the shelter of the shaded room; and then had to exert all her strength to keep from tears.

“I am sure I beg your pardon,” she said, “for laughing. I am so ashamed of myself; but it was so nice to be out of my room, and it was so funny to be in a strange house, and there was something so tempting in the closed door——”

“I only wish you had stayed,” said John, who would himself have felt very awkward but for her confusion; “but my mother will be back presently from the village, and then we can show you the house. I am afraid you are tired. Can I get you anything? I am so sorry my mother is out.”

Kate looked at him, recovering herself, while he stammered through these expressions of solicitude. Now she saw him close at hand, he was a new kind of man. Her scrutiny was not demonstrative, and yet it was exhaustive and penetrating. He was not a foeman worthy of her steel. He was one whom it would be but little credit to subjugate, reckoning by his powers of resistance. He would be an easy, even a willing victim. But it was something else in John which startled the young manslayer. She had seen various specimens of the fashionable young man, such as Providence throws now and then in the way of country girls; and she knew the genus squire, and all that can be produced in the way of professional in such a place as Camelford. It was the county town, and twice a-year there were assizes and barristers within reach; and there were county balls and hunt balls, and various other possibilities which brought the world as represented by the county families and their visitors within reach of the banker’s daughter. Mr Crediton was not a common banker. He was well connected, to begin with, and he was the Rothschild of the neighbourhood. Even to the large red-brick house in the High Street, to which he had been always faithful, very fine people would now and then condescend to come. And Fernwood, his country “place,” was always as full as he liked to make it of autumn guests, so that Kate’s knowledge of men was not inconsiderable. But John Mitford did not belong to any of the types she knew. He was not the ordinary university man, with which she was so well acquainted. He was not the budding curate—mellifluous and deferential. He was not handsome, nor graceful, nor so much as self-possessed. He did not look even as if he were endowed with that ordinary chatter of society which gets people over the difficulty of an eccentric introduction. If she talked the usual nonsense to him, Kate felt doubtful whether he would understand her. “But if one wanted anything done for one!——” she said to herself, with more surprise than ever in her pretty ingenuous-looking eyes. His face was not beautiful, was even a little heavy when in repose, and apt to cloud over with embarrassment, and lose all the light it had when driven into self-consciousness; and yet there was something in it she had never identified, never realised, before. All this passed through her mind while poor John was standing very awkwardly before her, begging her to tell him if he could not get her something, and regretting over and over again that his mother should be out. Goose! Kate thought to herself; and yet felt the influence of that something, which was beyond her reckoning, and which she had never made acquaintance with before.

“Oh, never mind,” she said; “I am quite comfortable, now I am here. I don’t want anything, thanks. Never mind me. If you are busy, don’t take the trouble to stay. You know I am at home, though I never was here before.”

“I hope so,” said John, standing before her, not knowing what to do or say. He took it for granted, in his innocence, that she wished him to go away. And he had something to do; but yet did not think it quite civil to leave her, and felt that his mother would not like it—and, to tell the truth, did not like it himself.

“Oh, pray don’t wait,” said Kate; “I shall be quite comfortable. There are plenty of books here, and I can go to the garden if I get tired.” Then there was a little pause. John never budged, standing thus in the height of awkwardness before her—wishing for his mother—wishing for anything to happen to deliver him, and yet feeling a charm in the position, which was very amazing to him. Kate, for her part, began to recover. She forgot the impression which had been made upon her by that unknown something in his face, and gradually came back to herself. She sat on the sofa playing with the picture-books on the table beside it, very demure; with cast-down eyes; and he balancing himself on one foot, not knowing what to make of himself, watching her anxiously for guidance. Kate resisted as long as she could, and then burst into a peal of unsteady laughter, in which John, very much surprised, did not find himself able to share.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she cried, when she could command her voice, “for being silly. I don’t know, I am sure, why I should laugh, only it is all so funny. I don’t know you in the least, and yet I know you quite well; and I have been living in the house ever so long, and yet go about like a thief, peeping in at the doors. It is all so very odd. I can’t tell what to make of it. And you who are looking at me so puzzled—you saved my life!” cried Kate, with another burst of laughter. She had never been so ashamed of herself before, but she could not help it. The whole business was so droll. He kept standing, balancing himself in the funniest way, looking down upon her with the strangest incomprehension—and he had saved her life! Though she was ashamed, she could not restrain herself. She laughed till the tears came into her eyes, more and more stimulated thereto by the gravity and astonishment with which he regarded her. As for John, he tried to laugh at first, but finally settled into quiet, and looked at her with an amazed and wondering observation, as if it was a new species that had thus come suddenly under his eyes.

“I am very glad you are so much amused,” he said at last, quite seriously, poor fellow, without the slightest ironical meaning. Was she by any possibility a little fool, giggling like a baby at the gravest matters? or was it some deeper sense in her of the phantasmagoria of life which had called forth this curious outburst of incomprehensible laughter? Laughter (John reflected in his perplexity—being, as will be perceived, a young intellectualist, and fond of such questions) is one of the most subtle and least comprehensible of things. It may express folly, levity, mere amusement—or it may express that deep sense of the humour which lies at the bottom of most earthly transactions, which is possible only to very rare spirits. Gazing at Kate with his eyes full of romance, he could not tell which it was, but felt it most probable that it was the latter, the depths being more natural to him than the shallows. “I don’t wonder that you laugh,” he added, after a pause, in the grave way which was so quaint to Kate. “It is like a thing that happened in a dream.”

At this strange comment she looked up at him, puzzled in her turn. Did he mean something? or was he laughing as she had been? But there was no laugh on John’s face; and suddenly it occurred to her that the eyes with which he was looking at her were those same eyes which she had seen, as in a vision, at the foot of the sofa, on the day of her accident. They were full of wonder, and anxiety, and alarm then; they were only serious and perplexed, and anxious to understand her now: but yet they were the same eyes; and the whole scene flashed back upon Kate’s impatient mind, and changed her mood in a moment. A sudden cloud, almost like that which comes over a child’s face when it is about to cry, enveloped her. “Ah!” she cried, suddenly, “I remember you now. I remember your eyes!”

“My eyes!” cried John, growing scarlet with amazement.

“Yes, your eyes. The day it all happened, you know—though I am sure I don’t know even now what did happen. When I came to myself, I suppose—the first thing I was conscious of was a pair of eyes looking at me. They had no body to them,” said Kate, with a sudden moisture coming into her own—“they looked so anxious, so unhappy, about me. I see now it was you. How awfully good of you to care!”

“Good of me!” said John, feeling this sudden praise steal all over him with a melting weakening softness of delight. “I was very anxious, and very much alarmed. I think—they thought—you would never come to yourself.”

“Was it so long?” said Kate, with that intense wistful interest which youth feels in itself.

“It was long to us—please don’t speak of it; it felt like an age,” said John, with a shudder. He turned half away from her in the pain of the recollection, and then turned back to find those moist surprised child eyes of hers fixed upon him with an incipient tear in each of them, and a look of—what was it?—tenderness, gratitude, admiration—yes, admiration—from her to him! It took away his breath, and took the strength out of him. He gave a low sort of chuckle of laughter, most bizarre expression of his feelings, and dropped into the first chair he could find in such agonies of bashfulness and pleasure as would have better beseemed a charity boy than a man trained to encounter with the world. “It is very funny, as you say,” he gasped; and then saw how ridiculous his speech was, and put his hands in his pockets, and blushed all over a violent painful red.

“I don’t think it is the least funny,” said Kate, now altogether in a different humour. “I might have been killed, and you might have been killed, your mother told me; and we are both only children, and what would they have done? I don’t mind so much about us, for we should but have died, and there would have been an end of it; but only think—what would they have done?” cried Kate, turning upon him eyes which were full of the suggested woe.

“Ah!” he cried, despising himself, “there you go above me, as is natural. It is like you to think it would not have mattered for yourself—only for those who loved you, and the desolate world it would have left them. It is like you to think of that.”

“How can you tell it is like me,” said Kate, “when you don’t know me? I was thinking of papa, and of your mother, not of anything so fine as a desolate world.”

“You were thinking like a true woman,” said the young man, gazing at her with all the romance of a mother’s only son in his unsophisticated eyes.

This was all very well for the moment, but Kate had dispersed the real impression which she had actually felt by uttering it, and it was too early in their acquaintance to plunge into romance; so she changed the subject skilfully. “Please don’t abuse women,” she said. “I know it is the fashion—and most girls rather like to give in to it, and think it is clever to like men’s society best. But I am fond of women, though, perhaps, you will think it weak of me. If I had to choose, I should rather have all women than all men—though, of course, one likes a mixture best.”

“Abuse women!” cried John; “I should as soon think of blaspheming heaven. It would be blasphemy. They are heaven to our earth—they are——”

“Hush,” said Kate, holding up her little white rose-tipped hand with a certain maternal superiority. “Don’t be extravagant. When you are in love, you know, it is quite proper to say all that sort of thing to one girl; but I don’t think it ought to be wasted upon anybody. Please tell me, did your father see me? and did you think it very dreadful when I came like that, peeping in at the door?”

John was not accustomed to be driven like this from one subject to another. By the time he had got himself to the vein of laughter she had become solemn; and now when his natural enthusiasm had been roused, she tossed him back again like a shuttlecock to the fun of the situation. Transitions so quick startled his unaccustomed mind. “I—was surprised,” he faltered, looking at her, wondering what kind of creature this was that could jump from one mood to another in the twinkling of an eye.

“I never saw you sitting there in the corner,” cried Kate. “I thought I had it all my own way. It was so stupid of me. You must have thought what a stupid she is, peeping, and never perceiving that she is found out. I can’t tell you how ashamed I was when I saw you. Did you think I was a thief, or a mad woman, or what did you think?”

“I thought——” said John, and then in his embarrassment paused, not knowing how to make the compliment which rose to his lips. It was no compliment, so far as his consciousness went. Had she been able to see into his mind, she would have seen an imagination too high-flown to be put into words. He could not give it any expression, having no experience as yet in the art of insinuated meanings. “Of course I knew it must be Miss Crediton,” he said, with a blush, after that pause; and he had not even ventured with his eyes to say the rest, but looked down, confused, afraid to meet her glance, and played with his watch-chain, and felt himself a fool—which, indeed, Kate would scarcely have hesitated to say he was.

“After all it did not require a very close application of your mind to guess that,” she said, half piqued; and then yawned softly, and then opened a book, and looked at two of the pictures,—and then added, “How long Mrs Mitford is of coming home!”

“Shall I go and look for her?” cried bewildered John, rising up with an alacrity which confirmed Kate in her low opinion of him. And he actually went away to the hall-door and took his hat, and went off down the avenue to quicken his mother’s return, leaving Kate in a state of consternation, which, after a few minutes, bubbled back into laughter. “Oh what a goose he is!” she said to herself, and yet was a little angry as well as annoyed that he should have gone away voluntarily, leaving her thus unamused and alone. It awoke a momentary question in her mind as to whether he was worth the trouble—a question which she summarily answered in the negative. Certainly not; he was a very good son, no doubt, and a handy man to have close by when your horse ran away with you—but as for anything else! Thus Kate resolved, making up her mind to leave him tranquil in his usual peace—a conclusion which had not the least practical effect upon her after-proceedings, as may be supposed.

Meanwhile John strode down the avenue in a very different frame of mind. The bees that had buzzed in Kate’s ears when she saw him first had come into his now, and hummed and hummed about him, confusing his mind hopelessly. He had held her once for one moment in his arms, fighting a desperate battle for her with death and destruction. Such a thing might have been as that they should have perished together, and been thus associated for evermore in an icy virginal union of death. If it had been so! the romance and the pathos charmed the foolish young fellow. And now here she was by his side, this creature whose life he had saved—who was his, as it were, by that very act, and belonged to him, whatever any one might say against it. All the same, she was nothing to him. She laughed when she mentioned lightly that strange bond. He had given her her life over again when she had lost it. It was his life, notwithstanding her laughter; and yet he did not know her, and she might pass away and leave no trace. But no—that was impossible. The trace was ineffaceable, he said to himself, and all that might come hereafter would never obliterate the fact that he had given her back her life, and that therefore that life belonged to him. It was not love at first sight, nor indeed any kind of love, which had smitten John; but he felt as if his claims were being ignored and laughed at, and yet were so real. She belonged to him, and yet she was nothing to him. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” This was the favourite principle of John Mitford’s thoughts, and he let it take such possession of him on the strength of the curious connection and non-connection between himself and Kate, that he went along under the trees, crossing the sunshine, with the fumes of that talk in his head, like a man walking in his sleep. Mrs Mitford was coming up the avenue in her grey gown and white shawl, a point of brightness in the long green vista. She had a basket on her arm, and looked like the fairy godmother with miraculous gifts for the house. The way in which her white shawl blazed out and toned down as she passed from the light to the shade, and from the shade to the light, was wonderful. Half of the trees were lime-trees, and threw such silken dainty greennesses and softened tones of shadow upon that pretty apparition; and perhaps the bees in John’s ears were only those which made the entire atmosphere harmonious, with that mingling of scent and sound which is the very crown of summer and June. There is no telling how pleased he was to see that white figure. There are moments, though perhaps few sons would confess it, in which a man’s mother is more shield to him than she even is to a girl. He could stay in the room without embarrassment if she were there. He would know what to say, or at least she would know what to lead him to say. She would save him from being thrust into the front of the conversation, and left to bear the brunt of it, which he was not equal to in his present state. The unknown heroine was her guest, and became at once natural and a matter of course in her presence. After-times, perhaps, might bring other necessities, but this was the most important now.

“Mother, we want you,” said John; “give me your basket, and make haste. Miss Crediton has come down-stairs.”

“Miss Crediton!” cried his mother, with a gasp. “Oh, the impatient naughty child! to take advantage as soon as I was out of the way. And have you made acquaintance with her, John?”

“Yes,” he said, succinctly, taking the basket from his mother’s hand.

“Yes—is that all? But how did you introduce yourself, and what did she say, and what do you think of her? Oh dear, dear! I am afraid you must have been looking very forbidding, and frightened poor Kate—why was I away?”

“I don’t think I frightened her,” said John; “at least she laughed. I know I never laugh when I am frightened. She is all by herself in the big drawing-room. Take my arm, and come as quick as you can; she ought not to be left alone.”

“I don’t think she can come to any harm for five minutes,” said Mrs Mitford, and looked anxiously in her son’s face. She was a very good woman—as good a woman as ever was. But John was her only child, and Kate Crediton would be very rich, and was very nice and pretty and unexceptionable, and he had saved her life. Could it be wondered at if his mother was a little anxious about their first meeting? If she had not liked Kate, Mrs Mitford said to herself, of course she would never have thought of it. But she was very fond of Kate, and they were quite suitable in point of age; and John was so good—worthy a princess! What a husband he would make! his mother thought, looking up at him fondly. If Kate Crediton had such a companion as that, instead of some man of the world who would think less of her than of her money, what a happy thing it would be for her! But “Don’t you think she is very charming, John?” was all the designing woman said.

“Pretty, certainly,” said the young man, as if he had been speaking of a cabbage-rose, and with looks as steady as if his heart had not been working like a steam-engine, pumping warmth and life and waves of wild fancy through all his veins.

“Pretty!” cried Mrs Mitford, and drew her arm out of his in her impetuosity; “I don’t know what you young men are made of nowadays. Why, I was thought pretty once; and not in that calm manner neither,” she exclaimed, with a pretty blush, and a laugh at herself.

“Mamma mia, I never see anybody so pretty now,” said John, caressingly. “Perhaps if Miss Crediton lives thirty years longer, and keeps on improving every day, she may get somewhere near you at last. She has the roses and lilies, but not the same sweet eyes.”

“Foolish boy,” said Mrs Mitford; “her eyes are far nicer than ever mine were. Mine were only brown, like most other people’s—and Kate’s are the loveliest blue, and that expression in them! I thought my son would know better, if nobody else did.”

“But perhaps if your son did know better, it would be the worse for him,” said John, without looking at her. He put his hands into his pockets again, and stared straight before him, and attempted a little weak distracted sort of whistle as he went on; and then a strange thrill ran all over the little woman by his side. She had been dreaming of it—planning it secretly in her mind for all these days—thinking how nice a thing it would be for John, who was not one to get riches for himself, or acquire gain in this selfish world. And now, what if it had come true? What if her son, who was all hers, had at this moment, in this innocent June morning, while she, all unsuspecting, was comforting the village people—strayed off from her side for ever—taken the first step in that awful divergence which should lead him more and ever more apart into his own life, and his own house, and the arms of the wife who should supersede his mother? She bore it bravely, standing up, with a gasp in her throat and a momentary quiver of her lips and eyelids, to receive the blow. And he never knew anything about it, stalking on there with his shadow creeping sideways behind him, and his hands buried deep in his pockets; not a handsome figure, take him at his best, but yet all the world to the mother who bore him—and perhaps not much less, should she be such a woman as his mother was, to the coming wife. But surely that could never be Kate!

CHAPTER IV.

Mr Crediton came to dinner that evening, and met his daughter with suppressed but evident emotion, such as made Kate muse and wonder. “I knew he liked me, to be sure,” she said afterwards to Mrs Mitford; “I knew he would miss me horribly; but I never expected him, you know, to look like that.”

“Like what, my dear?”

“Like crying,” said Kate, with a half-sob. They had left the gentlemen in the dining-room, and were straying round the garden in the twilight. Mr Crediton had been late, and had delayed dinner, and even the long June day had come to a close, and darkness was falling. The garden was full of the scent of roses, though all except the light ones were invisible in the darkness; tall pyramids of white lilies stood up here and there like ghosts in the gloom, glimmering and odorous; and the soft perfume of the grateful earth, refreshed by watering and by softer dew, rose up from all the wide darkling space around. “I think it must be because it is a rectory garden that it is so sweet,” said Kate, with a quick transition. By reason of being an invalid, she was leaning on Mrs Mitford’s arm.

“Are you fond of rectories?” said her kind companion. “But you might see a great many without seeing such a spot as Fanshawe Regis. It is a pretty house, and a good house; and, my dear, you can’t think what a pleasure it is to me to think that when we go, it will pass to my John.”

“Oh!” said Kate; and then, after a pause, “Has he quite made up his mind to be a clergyman?” she said.

“Yes, indeed, I hope so,” said his unsuspecting mother. “He is so well qualified for it. Not all the convenience in the world would have made me urge him to it, had I not seen he was worthy. But he was made to be a clergyman—even the little you have seen of him, my dear——”

“You forget I have only seen him to-day,” said Kate; “and then I don’t know much about clergymen,” she went on, demurely. “I have always thought, you know, they were people to be very respectful of—one can’t laugh with a clergyman as one does with any other man; indeed I have never cared for clergymen—please don’t be angry—they have always seemed so much above me.”

“But a good man does not think himself above any one,” said Mrs Mitford, falling into the snare. “The doctor might stand upon his dignity, if any one should; but yet, Kate, my dear, he was quite content to marry an ignorant little woman like me.”

“Do you think clergymen ought to marry?” said Kate, with great solemnity, looking up in her face.

Mrs Mitford gave a great start, and fell back from her young companion’s side. “Kate!” she cried, “you never told me you were High Church!”

“Am I High Church? I don’t think so; but one has such an idea of a clergyman,” said Kate, “that he should be so superior to all that. I can’t understand him thinking of—a girl, or any such nonsense. I feel as if he ought to be above such things.”

“But, my dear, after all, a clergyman is but a man,” said Mrs Mitford, suddenly driven to confusion, and not knowing what plea to employ.

“Should he be just a man?” asked Kate, with profound gravity. “Shouldn’t they be examples to all of us? I think they should be kept apart from other people, and even look different. I should not like to be intimate—not very intimate, you know—with a clergyman. I should feel as if it was wrong—when they have to teach us, and pray for us, and all that. Your son is not a clergyman yet, or I should never have ventured to speak to him as I did to-day.”

“But, you dear simple-minded child,” cried Mrs Mitford, half delighted with such an evidence of goodness, half confused by the thought of how this theory might affect her boy, “that is all very true; but unless they became monks at once, I don’t see how your notion could be carried out; and the experience of the Roman Catholics, dear, has shown us what a dreadful thing it is to make men monks. So that, you see, clergymen must mix in the world; and I am quite sure it is best for them to marry. When you consider how much a woman can do in a parish, Kate, and what a help she is, especially if her husband is very superior——”

“I don’t know, I am sure,” said Kate; “perhaps, in that case, you know, women should be the clergymen. But I do think they should be put up upon pedestals, and one should not be too familiar with them. Marrying a clergyman would be dreadful. I don’t know how any one could have the courage to do it. I suppose people did not look at things in that light when you were young?”

“No, indeed,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little warmth; “there were no High Church notions in my days. One thought one was doing the best one could for God, and that one had one’s work to do as well as one’s husband. And, my dear,” said the good woman, dropping into her usual soft humility, “I think you would think so, too, if you knew what the parish was when I came into it. Not that I have done much—not near so much, not half so much, as I ought to have done—but still, I think——”

“As if I ever doubted that!” cried Kate; “but then—not many are like you.”

“Oh yes, my dear! a great many,” said Mrs Mitford, with a smile of pleasure. “Even Mr Crediton’s pretty Kate, though he says she is a wilful little puss—if it came to be her fate to marry a clergyman——”

“That it never can be,” said Kate; “oh, dear, no! In the first place, papa would hate it; and, in the next place, I should—hate it myself.”

“Ah! my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, feeling, nevertheless, as if she had received a downright blow, “that all depends upon the man.”

They had come round in their walk to the path which led past the dining-room windows, where the blinds were but half dropped and the lights shining, and sounds of voices were audible as the gentlemen sat over their wine. It was the two elder men only who were talking—Dr Mitford’s precise tones, and those of Mr Crediton, which sounded, Kate thought, more “worldly.” John was taking no part in the conversation. Some time before, while they had still been at a little distance, Kate had seen him under the blind fidgeting in his chair, and listening to the sound of the footsteps outside. She knew as well that he was longing to join his mother and herself as if he had said it, and looked at him with an inward smile and philosophical reflection, whether a man who gave in so easily could be worth taking any trouble about. And yet, perhaps, it was not to Kate he had given in, but to the first idea of woman, the first enchantress whom he could make an idol of. “He shall not make an idol of me,” she said to herself; “if he cares for me, it must be as me, and not as a fairy princess.” This thought had just passed through her mind when she answered Mrs Mitford, which she did with a little nod of obstinacy and elevation of her drooping head.

“I am sure everything would not depend on the man, so far as I am concerned,” she said. “Men are all very well, but you must take everything into account before you go and sacrifice yourself to them. One man is very much like another, so far as I can see. One doesn’t expect to meet a Bayard nowadays.”

“But why not, my dear?” said Mrs Mitford. “There are Bayards in the world as much as there ever were. I am sure I know one. If it had been the time for knights, he would have been a Bayard; and as it is not the time for knights, he is the very best, the truest, and tenderest! No one ever knew him to think of himself. Oh, my dear! there are some men whose circumstances you never would think of—not even you.”

“But I am very worldly,” said Kate, shaking her head; “that is how I have been brought up. If I cared for anybody who was poor, I should give him no rest till he got rich. If I did not like his profession, or anything, I should make him change it. I don’t mean to say I approve of myself, and, of course, you can’t approve of me, but I know that is what I should do.”

“I think we had better go in and have some tea,” said Mrs Mitford, with a half-sigh. There was some regret in it for the heiress whom John had manifestly lost, for it was certain that a girl with such ideas would never touch John’s heart; and there was some satisfaction, too, for she should have her boy to herself.

“It is so sweet out here,” said Kate, with gentle passive opposition, “and there are the gentlemen coming out to join us—at least, there is your son.”

“John is so fond of the garden,” said Mrs Mitford, with another little sigh. She felt disposed to detach Kate’s arm from her own, and run to her boy and warn him. But politeness forbade such a step, and his mother’s wistful eyes watched his tall figure approaching in the darkness—approaching unconscious to his fate.

“We were talking of you,” said Kate, with a composure which filled Mrs Mitford with dismay,” and about clergymen generally. I should be frightened if I were you—one would have to be so very, very good. Don’t you ever feel frightened when you think that you will have to teach everybody, and set everybody a good example? I think the very thought would make me wicked, if it were me.”

“Should it?” said John,—and his mother thought with a little dread that he looked more ready to enter into the talk than she had ever seen him before; “but then I don’t understand how you could be wicked if you were to try.”

“Ah! but I do,” said Kate, “and I could not bear it. Do you really like being a clergyman? you who are so young and—different. I can fancy it of an old gentleman like Dr Mitford; but you——”

“I am not a clergyman yet,” said John, with a half-audible sigh.

“And Dr Mitford is not so old,” said his mother, “though I suppose everybody who is over twenty looks old to you; but Miss Crediton means that you must feel like a clergyman, my dear boy, already. I am sure you do!”

“I don’t see how you can be so sure,” said John; and perhaps for the first time in his life he felt angry with his mother. Why should she answer for him in this way when he was certainly old enough and had sense enough to answer for himself? He was a little piqued with her, and turned from her towards the young stranger, whom he had spoken to for the first time that day. “I am secular enough at present,” he said; “you need not be sorry for me. There is still time to reflect.”

“It is never any good reflecting,” said Kate; “if you are going in for anything, I think you should do it and never mind. The more one thinks the less one knows what to do.”

“And oh, my dear, don’t jest about such subjects!” said Mrs Mitford. “Don’t you recollect what we are told about him that puts his hand to the plough and looks back?”

“And is turned into a pillar of salt?” said Kate, demurely. “Mr John, that would never do. I should not like to see you turned into a pillar of salt. Let us think of something else. How sweet it is out here in the dark! The air is just raving about those roses. If you could not see them, you would still know they were there. I like an old-fashioned garden. Is that a ghost up against the buttress there, or is it another great sheaf of lilies? If I had such a garden as this, I should never care to go anywhere else.”

“My dear, I hope you will come here as often as you like,” said Mrs Mitford, with hospitable warmth; and then she thought of the danger to John, and stopped short and felt a little confused. “The Huntleys are friends of yours, are not they?” she went on, faltering. “When you are with them, it will be so easy to run over here.”

“Oh, indeed, I should much rather come here at first hand, if you will have me,” said Kate, frankly. “I don’t think I am fond of the Huntleys. They are nice enough, but—— And, dear Mrs Mitford, I would rather go to you than to any one, you have been so good to me—that is, if you like me to come here.”

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs Mitford, half touched, half troubled, “if I could think there was any amusement for you——”

“Whether there may be amusement or not, there must always be a welcome. I am sure, mother, that is what you meant to say,” said John, with a certain suppressed indignation in his tone, which went to his mother’s heart.

“Oh yes,” she said, more and more confused; “Miss Crediton knows that. If she can put up with our quietness—if she does not mind the seclusion. We have not seen so much of the Huntleys as we ought to have seen lately, but when they are here——”

“I had much rather come when you were quite quiet. I love quiet,” said deceitful Kate, putting her face so close to her friend’s shoulder as almost to touch it in a caressing way she had. Mrs Mitford trembled with a presentiment of terror, and yet she could not resist the soft half-caress.

“My dear child!” she cried, pressing Kate’s arm to her side. And John loomed over them both, a tall shadow, with a face which beamed through the darkness; they looked both so little beside him—soft creatures, shadowy, with wavy uncertain outlines, melting into the dark, not clear and black and well defined like himself—moving softly, with a faint rustle in the air, which might almost have been wings. His mother and—— what was Kate to him? Nothing—a stranger—a being from a different sphere; yet, at the same time, the one creature in all the world upon whom he had a supreme claim, whose life he had fought for, and rescued out of the very jaws of death.

After this they went in with eyes a little dazzled by the sudden change into the drawing-room, where the lamps were lighted, and the moths came sweeping in at the open window, strange optimists, seeking the light at all costs. Kate threw herself down in a great chair, in the shadiest corner, her white dress giving forth (poor John thought) a kind of reflected radiance, moon-like and subdued. She sank down in the large wide seat, and gave a little yawn. “I’m so tired,” she said; “I think I shall make papa carry me up-stairs.”

“Not your papa, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, who, to tell the truth, was a little matter-of-fact; “not your papa. He does not look very strong, and it would be too much for him. The servants can do it; or perhaps John——”

John started up, and came forward with his eyes lit up, half with eagerness, half with fun. He had held her in his arms before, but she had not been conscious of that. “Oh, please!” cried Kate, in alarm, “I did not mean it; I only said it in fun—for want of something else to say.”

“That is Kate’s general motive for her observations,” said Mr Crediton, who had just then come in with Dr Mitford; “and heaven knows it is apparent in them! but if I don’t carry her up-stairs, I must carry her home. She must have been no end of a trouble to you.”

“Oh no—not yet, I hope,” said Mrs Mitford, still with some confusion. She cast a rapid glance over the situation. In less than three months John was going up for ordination. After that, she reflected, his mind would be settled, and such an interruption would do him less harm. “But I feel it is very selfish trying to keep her when, I daresay, you have a great many pleasant engagements,” she went on, with diplomatic suavity; “and we are so quiet here. Only you must bring her back again, Mr Crediton—that you must promise me—in autumn, or at Christmas the very latest——”

She caught John’s eye, and faltered and stopped short; and then, of all people in the world, it was Dr Mitford who interposed.

“I should say it was the doctor who had to be consulted first,” he said. “After an illness I make it a principle never to move till I have consulted my medical man. This is a rule which I never transgress, my dear, as you know—and we must do the same by our young friend. You can decide after he has been here.”

“But the fact is, Kate, if you don’t come at once you will come to an empty house,” said her father. “I have to go up to town on election business, and I should like to be here to take my girl home.”

“Then she shall wait till you come back,” said Dr Mitford; “and now that is settled, if you will come with me to my library I will show you the old charter I was speaking of. It is the earliest of the kind I have ever seen. You will find it very curious. It grants the privilege of sanctuary to all the Abbey precincts”—he went on, as he opened the door for his guest, talking all the way. They could hear the sound of his voice going along the oak passage which led to the library, though they could not make out the words; and somehow it seemed to have a kind of soporific effect upon the party left behind, who sat and gazed at each other, and listened as if anxious to catch the last word.

“What is all settled?” cried Kate, who was the first to break the silence. “Oh, please, am I to take sanctuary in the Abbey precincts, or what is to be done with me? I should so like to know!”

“Mr Crediton has consented that you should stay,” cried John, eagerly. Kate took no more notice of him than if he had been a cabbage, but bent forward to Mrs Mitford, ignoring all other authority. And what could that good woman do, who was not capable of hurting the feelings of a fly?

“My dear,” she said, faltering, “what would be the use of going home when your papa is going away? Much better stay with me, if you can make up your mind to the quiet. We are so very quiet here.”

“But you said Christmas,” said Kate, who was a little mortified, and did not choose to be unavenged.

“I said—I was thinking—I meant you to understand—— Oh! what is it, Lizzie?” cried Mrs Mitford, eagerly, as the maid came to the door. “Widow Blake?—oh yes, I am coming;” and she went away but too gladly to escape the explanation. Then there was nobody left in the drawing-room but Kate alone with John.

The girl turned her eyes upon him with their surprised ingenuous look, and then with profound gravity addressed him: “Mr John, tell me—you know what is best for her better than I do. Is it not convenient to have me now?”

“Convenient!” cried the young man; “how is such a word to be applied to you? It could never be but a delight to all of us——”

“Oh, hush, hush,” said Kate; “don’t pay me any compliments. You know I am only a stranger, though somehow I feel as if you all belonged to me. It is because your mother has been so kind; and then—you saved my life.”

“That was nothing,” cried John; “I wish it had cost me something, then I might have felt as if I deserved——”

“What? my thanks?” she said, softly, playing with him.

“No, but to have saved you—for I did save you; though it did not cost me anything,” he said, regretfully; “and that is what I shall grudge all my life.”

“How very droll you are!” said Kate, after a long look at him, in which she tried to fathom what he meant without succeeding; “but never mind what it cost you. My opinion is, that, after such a thing as that, people become a sort of relations—don’t you think so? and you are bound to tell me when I ask you. Please, Mr John, is it convenient for your mother to have me now?—should I stay now? I shall be guided by what you say.”

He gave an abrupt idiotic laugh, and got up and walked about the room. “Of course you must stay,” he said; “of course it is convenient. What could it be else? It would be cruel to leave us so abruptly, after all.”

“Well, I am very comfortable,” said Kate; “I shall like it. The only thing was for your mother. If she should not want me to stay—but anyhow, the responsibility is upon you now; and so, as Dr Mitford says, as we have settled that, tell me what we are going to do.”

“To do?” said John, with open eyes.

“To amuse ourselves,” said Kate; “for I am a stranger, you know. How can I tell how you amuse yourselves in this house?”

“We don’t amuse ourselves at all,” said John; and as he had been coming nearer and nearer, now he drew a chair close to her sofa, and sat down and gazed at her with a new light in his face. He laughed, and yet his eyes glowed with a serious fire. He was amused and surprised, and yet the serious nature underneath gave a certain meaning to everything. He took the remark not as the natural expression of a frivolous, amusement-loving creature, but as a sudden, sweet suggestion which turned to him all at once the brighter side of life. “I think we have rather supposed that amusement was unnecessary—that it was better, perhaps, not to be happy. I don’t know. In England, I suspect, many people think that.”

“But you are happy—you must be happy,” said Kate. “What! with this nice house, and such a nice dear mother—and Dr Mitford too, I mean, of course—and just come from the university, which all the men pretend to like so much. I do not believe you have not been happy, Mr John.”

“I am very happy now,” said John Mitford, with a dawning faculty for saying pretty things of which he had been himself totally unconscious. He did not mean it as a compliment; and when Kate gave the faintest little shrug of her pretty shoulders, he was bewildered and discouraged. The words were commonplace enough to her, and they were not commonplace but utterly original to him. He was happy, and it was she who had made him so. It never occurred to the young man that any fool could say as much, it was so simply, fully true in his case. And he sat and glowed upon her with his new-kindled eyes. Yes, it was true what she said—she was a stranger, and yet she belonged to them; or rather, she belonged to him. He might not be worthy of it. He had done nothing to deserve it, and yet through him her life had come back to her. He had saved her. He was related to her as no man else in the world was. Her life had been lost, and he had given it back. His mind was so full of this exulting thought that he forgot to say anything; and as for Kate, she had to let him gaze at her, with amusement at first, then with a blush, and with a movement of impatience at the last.

“Mr John,” she said, turning her head away, and taking up a book to screen her, “I am sure you don’t mean to be disagreeable; but—did you never—see—a girl before?”

“Good heavens! what a brute I am!” cried poor John; and then he added humbly, “no, Miss Crediton, I never saw—any one—before.”

Upon which Kate laughed, and he, taking courage, laughed too, withdrawing his guilty eyes, and blazing red to his very hair. And when Mrs Mitford came back, she could not but think that on the whole they had made a great deal of progress. The two fathers were in the library for a long time over that charter, and Kate’s merry talk soon beguiled the yielding mother. When the tea came, she sat apart and made it, and watched the young ones with her tender eyes. It seemed to her that she had never seen her boy so happy. “She must have been making fun of me with all that about the clergymen,” Mrs Mitford said to herself; “and but for that, what could I desire more?” And she thought of John’s happiness with such a wife, and of Kate’s fortune, and of what a blessing it would be if it could be brought about; and sighed—as indeed most people do when it appears to them as if their prayers were about to be granted, and nothing left to them more to desire.

CHAPTER V.

“Well, Kate, I will leave you here since you wish it,” Mr Crediton said next morning before he went away; “but first I must warn you to mind what you are about. They are very nice people, and have been very good to you—but I think I had rather have left you at home all the same. See that you don’t repay good with evil—that’s all.”

“You must have a very poor opinion of me, papa,” said Kate, demurely; “but how could I do that if I were to try?”

Mr Crediton shook his head. “I have a great mind to carry you off still,” he said. “I don’t feel at all sure that you have not begun it already. Kate, there is that young man to whom I owe your life——”

This expression touched her deeply. It was not, to whom you owe your life;—that would have been commonplace. “Dear papa,” said Kate, embracing his arm with both hands, and putting down her head upon it, “I always wonder why you took the trouble to care for me so much.”

“I suppose it’s for your mother’s sake,” he answered, looking down upon his child with eyes which were liquid and tender with love; but such a little episode was only for a moment. “Let us come back to our subject,” he said. “Don’t make that boy unhappy, Kate. That would be a very poor return. He looks something of a cub, but I hear he is a very good fellow, and he saved your life. Let him alone. He deserves it at your hands.”

“What! to be let alone! What a curious way of showing one’s gratitude!” cried Kate. “No, papa, I know a way worth two of that. He shall be my friend. There shall be no nonsense—that I can promise you; but to pay no attention to him would be horribly ungrateful. I could not do it. Besides, he is very nice—not the sort of man you would ever fall in love with, but very nice—for a friend.”

“Ah! I put no faith in your friends,” said Mr Crediton, shaking his head. “I have a great mind to take you home after all.”

“But that would be breaking faith with Mrs Mitford,” said Kate. Her father turned upon her one of those strange, doubtful looks, with which men often compliment women—as much as to say, You wonderful, incomprehensible creature, I don’t know what you would be at. I can’t understand you; but as I must trust you all the same——“Well,” he said, aloud, with a shake of his head, “I suppose you must have your way; but I won’t have this young fellow made game of, Kate.”

“As if I could ever think of such a thing!” she said, indignantly; and thus he had to go at last, not without a qualm of conscience, leaving Kate and her dresses and her maid in possession of the house. She stayed most of the morning in her own room after he had gone, that nobody might say she was too impetuous in her rush upon the prey, but came down to luncheon with all the charming familiarity yet restraint of a young lady staying in the house, ready to be amused, and yet demanding nothing. The first thing she met when she entered the room was John’s eyes watching the door, looking for her. Poor fellow!—those same eyes which had struck her first when she opened her own in this strange yet so familiar house.

“I do not know that we have ever had a young lady here before. Have we ever had a young lady here before, my dear?” said Dr Mitford. “As it is an opportunity which does not occur every day, we must make the most of it. Miss Crediton, Mrs Mitford, of course, has her own occupations, but, so far as the men of the house are concerned, command us—you must let us know what you like best.”

“Oh, please, Doctor Mitford! fancy my dragging you out to go places with me,” cried Kate. “I should be so dreadfully ashamed of myself! I don’t want to do anything, please. I want you to let me be just as if I were at home. I want to go to the schools, and the poor people, and take walks, and play croquet, as if I belonged to you;” and then she recollected herself, and caught a curious ardent look from John, and a still more curious inquiring one from his mother, and blushed violently, and stopped short all at once.

“But that cannot be,” said Dr Mitford, who noticed neither the blush nor the sudden pause, and, indeed, did not understand why conversation should be interrupted by such foolish unforeseen accidents. “I hope we are not so regardless of the duties of hospitality as that. Let me think what there is to see in the neighbourhood. What is there to see, John? There is a very interesting Roman camp at Dulchester, and there are some curious remains of the old Abbey at St Biddulph’s, about which there has been a great deal of controversy: if you are at all interested in archæology——”

“Oh, please!” cried Kate, and then she gave Mrs Mitford a piteous look, “don’t let me be a nuisance to any one—pray don’t. I shall be quite happy in the garden, and taking walks about. If I had thought I should be a nuisance to any one I should have gone home.”

“On the contrary,” Dr Mitford went on in his old-fashioned way, “John and I will feel ourselves only too fortunate. Mrs Mitford is always busy in the parish—that is her way; but if you will accept my escort, Miss Crediton——”

And the old gentleman waved his hand with old-fashioned gallantry. He was a little old gentleman, with beautiful snow-white hair and a charming complexion, and the blackest of coats and the whitest of linen. He was so clean that it was almost painful to look at him. He was like a Dutch house, all scrubbed and polished, and whitened and blackened to absolute perfection. He was not a man who thought it wrong theoretically to be happy, though his son had almost hinted as much; but it never occurred to him to take any trouble about the matter. In short, his nature made no special demands upon him for happiness. If things went well it was so much the better; if not, why, there was no great harm done. He was above the reach of any particular strain of evil fortune. Nothing could be more unlikely than that he should ever have to change his dinner-hour, or any of his favourite habits; and if his wife or his son had been very ill, or had died, or any calamity of that sort had happened, the Doctor hoped he had Christian fortitude to bear it; and anything less than this he could scarcely have realised as unhappiness. Why, then, with the dinner-hour immovable, and everything else comfortably settled, should people trouble themselves searching for amusement? The worst of this principle was, that when it came to be a right and necessary thing to seek amusement—when, for instance, a young lady was staying in the house—Dr Mitford was a little embarrassed. Amusement had become a duty in such a case, but how was it to be found? So he thought of the Roman camp and the ruins of St Biddulph’s, and that was all the length his invention could reach.

“She is not strong enough yet for these long expeditions,” said Mrs Mitford, coming to Kate’s aid; “she must be left quite quiet with me, I think. I am sure that will be the doctor’s opinion. Yes, my dear, I will take you to the schools; there are some such nice little things that it is a pleasure to teach, and there are some of my poor people that I know you would like——”

“Mother, mother, do you think that is what interests Miss Crediton?” said John, with that quick sense of his parents’ imperfections which is so common to the young. A Roman camp on the one side, and the old women in the village on the other, proposed as amusement for this bright-eyed fairy creature, to whom every joy and rapture that the world possessed must come natural! Did not music seem to come up about her out of the very earth as she walked, and everything to dance before her, and the flowers to give out sweeter odours, and the very sun to shine more warmly? John was not learned in delights, any more than his father and mother, but yet nothing less than the superlative was good enough for her—to preside over tournaments, and give prizes of love and beauty; to be the queen of the great festivals of poetry; to have everything indefinite and sweet and splendid laid at her feet. It was so strange that they should not understand!

“I shall delight in seeing the old women,” said Kate, with a laugh, which he thought was addressed to him; “but, indeed, I don’t think I can teach anything—I am so dreadfully ignorant. You can’t think how ignorant I am. We have a school at Fernwood, and I went once and they gave me sums to look over—sums, Mrs Mitford—only fancy! and I was to tell if they were right or wrong. It was little chits of eight or nine that had done them, and I could not have done one for my life; so, please, I can’t pretend to teach.”

“My dear,” said Mrs Mitford, beaming upon her with maternal eyes, “you are not a clergyman’s wife.”

“Thank heaven!” said Kate; and then it occurred to her that she had been rude, and the colour stole to her cheek. “Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to be impertinent.”

“You were not impertinent, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, with a sigh. “I daresay you are quite right. One likes one’s own lot best, you know; but unless you took to it, there could not be much pleasure in being a clergyman’s wife.”

“Oh, please, don’t think I was rude,” cried Kate, “to you, dear Mrs Mitford, that have been so very, very good to me! All I thought was, that perhaps—nowadays,—but never mind what nonsense came into my head. May I go to see Lizzie’s mother? I have been hearing so much about her, and about the trouble they have with the big lads.”

“My dear, that is not amusement for a young lady,” said Dr Mitford. “If you will come with me, Miss Crediton, I assure you, you will like it better. I will drive you to the Roman camp. There are some measurements I want to verify. I am writing a paper for the Archæological Society, and they are sad fellows to pick holes in one’s coat. You must tell them, John, to have the phaeton out, and I will drive Miss Crediton over to Dulchester this afternoon. We could not have a more charming day.”

“And you can call at the Huntleys, and have some tea, Doctor,” said Mrs Mitford; “it is a long drive. Miss Crediton is a friend of theirs. It will be more amusing for her; and if you would ask the girls to come over to-morrow, perhaps we might get up a croquet-party. Frederick Huntley has come home, so that would be another man. There are no young men in the parish, that is the sad thing, when one wants to get up a little party,” said Mrs Mitford, with depression. She was looking quite weary and miserable, and did not know what to do with herself. Amusement for the young lady staying in the house! How was she to procure it? You feed caterpillars, when you collect them, with green leaves, and birds have their appropriate seed, and even sea-anemones in an aquarium; but when there are no young men in a parish, how are you to feed a stray young lady? This was the frightful problem which clouded over Mrs Mitford’s soul. And this was complicated by the harder difficulty still, which continually returned upon her—a girl who thanked heaven she was not a clergyman’s wife! Was it right to leave such a creature in unfettered intercourse with John?

Kate made one or two ineffectual struggles to deliver herself from her fate, but when she saw the phaeton drive up—an ancient spiderylooking vehicle, with room only for two—her spirit was cowed within her. There was no way of escape short of being taken suddenly ill, and she could not be so unkind as that. She reserved the card in her hand for future use, should this persecution be continued. “I hope I shan’t get ill when Dr Mitford is so kind,” she said, as she was helped into the shabby little carriage. It was the only one they had at Fanshawe, and they thought a great deal of it. It was high, and the wheels were large, and the hood toppled about so, it looked as if it must tumble down on their noses every minute—and Kate had carriages of her own, and knew what was what in this respect; and she did not care in the least about the Roman camp, and the roads were very dusty, and would spoil her clean pretty dress. Nevertheless she had to yield like a martyr, and indeed felt herself very like one as she drove away by Dr Mitford’s side, leaving John standing looking very blank on the lawn. “Why could not he come too?” Kate said to herself; and called him fainéant and sluggard in her heart. But, after all, there was no room for John. He watched, feeling much more blank even than she did, as the carriage rattled away, and by-and-by was joined by his mother, who, for her part, was rather pleased to get rid of her visitor for half a day at least. Mrs Mitford laid her hand on her son’s shoulder as she came to him, but John took no notice, and only gazed the more at the carriage rattling and grinding and wheezing away.

“My dear boy!” she said, looking at him with tender admiring eyes, and smoothing his sleeve with her soft hand as if she loved it, “don’t look after them like that. You have seen the camp at Dulchester before now.”

“Oh yes—fifty times at least,” said John, turning away with a derisive grin. “You don’t think I care for that?”

“Then why should you look so blank?” said his mother. “Miss Crediton is very nice, but, do you know, I am afraid it will be very hard work entertaining her. I am sure I don’t know what to do. If the Huntleys come to-morrow, that will be enough (I hope) for one day. And then we might have a dinner-party; but I can’t think she would care for a dinner-party. I am sure I should not at her age. Your papa thinks that is the proper thing; but fancy one of our ordinary parties, with the Fanshawes and the Lancasters and the doctor, and some curate to fill up—what would that be to her?”

“Mamma,” said John, “I am sure you are taking a great deal too much trouble. Why not leave Miss Crediton alone? She has gone to-day only to please my father. She does not care for Roman camps any more than I do, nor for a drive in a shabby old phaeton with defective springs.”

“My dear, you are doing her injustice,” said Mrs Mitford, with severe loftiness. “She is rather frivolous, I fear; but still, you may be sure Kate understands that to have the Doctor to drive her, and tell her all about the country, is what very few people attain.”

To this speech John made no reply. The carriage was out of sight, and even the dust it had raised had dropped peacefully to earth again; but still the young man stood with a dissatisfied face. “I could have taken her for a walk, and she would have liked it better,” he said—“at least I should have liked it better; and I am sure she does not want such a fuss made over her, mamma.”

“You would have liked it better!” said Mrs Mitford. “Oh, my dear, dear boy! did you hear what she said this morning, John, about a clergyman’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“And yesterday what a tirade about clergymen! She made me half angry. As if your papa would have been a better man had he not married me!”

“I don’t think that was what she meant,” said John. “My father—is—different. One does not think of him, nor of what is. One thinks of what is to be.”

“Then, perhaps, you agree with her, and think clergymen should not marry?” said Mrs Mitford, with a little heat. “Oh John! if you were to turn out a Ritualist, I think it would break my heart.”

“I don’t intend to turn out an anythingist,” said John, shutting his face up into an obstinate blank which his mother knew. She gave a sigh, and shook her head, and once more softly stroked his arm.

“And since we are speaking of this,” she said, sinking her voice, and smoothing down his sleeve more and more tenderly, with her eyes fixed on it, as if that was the object of her thoughts, “I have one little word to say to you, John—just one word. My dear boy! you are very young, and you don’t know the world, nor the ways of girls. She is very pretty, and winning, and all that; but I would not put myself too much at her service, if I were you. It might not be good for yourself—and it might put things in her head.”

“Put things in her head,” echoed poor John. “O mother, mother! as if she would care twopence if she never saw me again! But I know what you mean, and I don’t mean to lose my head or my senses. She is out of my reach. I am not so simple but I can see that.”

“And that is just what I can’t see,” said his mother, sharply. “She is not a duchess; but, my dear, the prudent way is to have no more to do with her than just friendliness and civility. I am so glad you see that.”

“Oh yes, I see it,” John replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I’ll go and see to the mowing of the lawn, since there’s to be croquet to-morrow—a thing I detest,” he added, with irritation, as he moved away. Poor John! His mother looked after him, wondering was he really so wise as he said, or was this mere pride and disappointment—or what was it? There had never been a young lady before at Fanshawe Regis since the boy had grown up; for Miss Lancaster at the Priory was nearly old enough to be his mother, and the young Fanshawes were very delicate, and always travelling about in search of health, and the Doctor’s little girls were in the nursery. And as for the Huntleys, though they were so rich, they were comparatively new people in the country, and the girls were plain; so that pretty Kate Crediton was doubly dangerous. Ah! if she had only been a good girl—one of those girls who are so common—or at least everybody says so—who adore clergymen, and work slippers for them! Few such young ladies had fallen in Mrs Mitford’s way; but she believed in them, on the authority of the newspapers, as most people do. If Kate had been but one of those, with her nice fortune and her nice position, and her pretty manners and looks, what a thing for John! Mrs Mitford heaved a sigh over this dream, which, alas! it seemed but too clear she must relinquish; and with the sigh breathed a prayer that her boy might be protected from all snares, and not led into temptation more than he could bear.

John himself went off peremptorily to the gardener, and disturbed him among his vegetables. He was busy with the cucumbers, and considered the lawn at that moment worse than vanity. But John’s temper was up, thanks to his father who had thus carried her off from him under his very nose, and poor Roots had no chance against him. When he had effectually spoiled that poor man’s morning’s work, the young fellow went off sullenly enough with his fishing-rod. She was out of his reach, no doubt. She thanked heaven she was no clergyman’s wife; but yet—— The only man in the world, so far as John knew, who had any right to her was himself—more right than her father. Her life was his, for he had given it back to her. Of all ties on earth, could there be one more binding? not that he meant to make any ungenerous use of his claim, or even to breathe it in words; but yet he knew it, and she knew it. He had given her back her life.

CHAPTER VI.

As for Kate and Dr Mitford, they did not know very well what to say to each other. “What a charming day!” the girl said at intervals; “and what a pretty country! I never knew it until I took that unfortunate ride.”

“Don’t speak of that,” said the old gentleman; “at least don’t speak of it so. It was a most fortunate ride, I am sure, for us.”

“It makes me giddy when I think of it,” said Kate, shutting her eyes.

“You are very fond of riding, I suppose? I am always rather nervous when I see a lady on a spirited horse. You are very charming riders, and very full of courage, and all that,” said the Doctor, who was himself considerably bothered by the mild animal he was driving; “but it requires a man’s hand, my dear Miss Crediton. There are some things, believe me, that require a man’s hand.”

“Yes, no doubt,” said Kate, politely, longing all the time to take the reins into her own small nervous fingers. Dr Mitford had a nice little white soft hand—a clergyman’s hand—without any bone or fibre in it. “We made up our minds quite suddenly,” she went on, “that we would go back from Humbledon to Camelford, riding. I had often heard of Fanshawe Regis, but I never saw it before.”

“Most people have heard of Fanshawe Regis,” said the Doctor. “I consider my library one of the lions of the country—not that it is so very old, only Elizabethan, or, at the farthest, Henry the Seventh; but household architecture is a thing by itself. We expect the Archæological Society to hold its next meeting at Camelford, and then I hope much light may be thrown upon our antiquities. We shall make an excursion to Dulchester, Miss Crediton, and you must come with us there.”

“Oh, I am sure I am much obliged,” said Kate.

“You would enjoy that,” said Dr Mitford. “Downy is sure to be there from Oxford, and I should not wonder if he gave a lecture on it. He is one of the very great guns. He understands more about it than almost any man in England, I must say, to do him justice. But almost is not all, my dear Miss Crediton; and when you see a man setting himself up for an authority in presence of others who——” Here the Doctor stopped, and laughed a conscious complacent laugh; by which Kate perceived that Dr Mitford himself was a greater authority still, or at least thought he was.

“It is very funny,” said Kate, “but I shall be better off going with you than if I had half-a-dozen archæological societies. I feel quite sure of that.”

“Well, well, we must not brag,” said Dr Mitford, waving his white hand softly. “This camp, you must know, was one of the camps of Agricola, which he made on his journey northwards. It is constructed——”

And so the narrative went on. Kate kept looking up at him with her bright eyes, and said yes, and said no, and made herself very agreeable; but I cannot undertake to say that she was much the better for it. In the first place, she took no interest whatever in Roman camps, and then she had a good deal on her mind. What was John about all this time? Why did not he manage to get into the phaeton in his father’s place, and drive her? If the horse had not been the meekest and most long-suffering of animals, Kate felt that there must have been another running away, and another accident. And her recent experience had made her nervous. When she had received an immense deal of information about the castrum which she was going with so little enthusiasm to visit, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a group of turrets among the trees, and gave a start, which made Dr Mitford and his horse swerve aside, and shook the hood of the phaeton so that it nearly descended upon the party, burying them alive.

“Oh, there is Westbrook, where the Huntleys live!” cried Kate. “I beg your pardon, Dr Mitford, I am sure. Mrs Mitford said we were to call. Don’t you think we had better go now, in case they should be out? There was a message, you know, that you were to give.”

“Oh, about croquet,” said the Doctor, and his brow was slightly ruffled. He would not allow, even to himself, that his instruction was slighted; but still he felt that she had been able to see the towers of Westbrook at the very moment when he was affording her every information. But he was too polite to make any objection. Westbrook was a very fine house, but its turrets were new, and its wealth had been made, not inherited, for which half the country said, “So much the more credit to the Huntleys;” and all the country, even the poor clergymen and the country doctors, looked down upon them, though not upon their parties, which were unexceptionable. Mr Crediton being himself only a banker, had not much indulged in this universal condescension; and Kate was very glad to bethink herself of the Huntleys at this special moment. They were better than Dulchester, and the phaeton with the unsteady hood. There were two sons and two daughters. The girls were plain, and no way remarkable; neither was Willie, the second son; but Fred was very clever—so clever that nobody knew what was to be done with him. He had taken a first-class at Oxford, and done everything else a young man can do that is gratifying and honourable. He was fellow of his college, and was understood to be able to do anything he pleased in the way of scholarship or literature. If he had but taken the trouble to write, a great many people were of opinion that he would have beaten Tennyson hollow; but he was indolent, and satisfied with his position, and had as much as ever he could desire without doing anything for it. And consequently, his great gifts were unexercised. The country, however, which had been cold to his family, and patronised them, acknowledged that such condescension would be out of character to a man who had taken a first-class. And thus the Huntleys had risen in popular estimation. Kate recalled Mrs Mitford’s words to her mind as they drove unwillingly up to the great door. “Frederick is at home.” She had known Frederick for years, but he was too much self-absorbed, Kate thought, ever to care for any girl; and so it happened that not even flirtation had ever passed between them. “That prig to play croquet!” she said to herself, with a shrug of her shoulders; and then she sprang down, and received a farewell blow from the hood of the phaeton upon her pretty bonnet. Poor Kate! It was all she could do to restrain herself from shaking her little fist at it. The tears almost came to her eyes as she straightened the injured bonnet with her hands. Was it an evil omen? for the Huntleys were out, all but Mrs Huntley—and the girls were engaged for next day; and Willie had gone to town; and Fred——“My dear, you know I never can answer for Fred,” his mother said, with pride. “He has his own engagements, and all sorts of things to do.”

“Oh yes, to be sure; it is not likely he would stoop so far as to play croquet,” said Kate; “but I am only giving Mrs Mitford’s message. You know it is not me that asks. I will tell her what you say.”

“Tell her I am so sorry,” said Mrs Huntley. “I know what it is to be disappointed when one tries to get up any little thing impromptu, and the girls would have been so glad, and so would Willie—but she knows I cannot answer for Fred. Dr Mitford, I am so sorry Mr Huntley is not at home, nor my son. If they had known there was the least chance of seeing you! But now you have come, you must have some tea.”

“I thank you, my dear madam,” said the Doctor, “but we have still a good way to go. I am taking Miss Crediton to see the Roman camp at Dulchester. It is not often I go so far, but you know I pretend to a little antiquarian knowledge——”

“Oh, a little indeed!” said Mrs Huntley; “we all know what that means. You may be very proud, Kate, to have such a cicerone. I can’t tell you how I sigh for you, Doctor, when we have people down from town, and they go to see the camp. Oh, don’t ask me, I always beg of them—you should hear all about it if Dr Mitford were here.”

“Well, one has one’s little bits of information, of course,” said Dr Mitford, with a deprecating wave of the hand; “one’s hobby, I suppose the young people would call it. I am very glad that Frederick has got his fellowship. It must be a great satisfaction to his father and you.”

“Well, we were pleased, of course,” said the lady; “though, but for the honour of the thing, it did not matter to Fred. I often say how odd it is that such things should fall to him who don’t want them, when so many poor fellows, to whom it would be a real blessing, fail. He has no business to have the money and the brains too.”

“That must make it all the more agreeable,” said the Doctor, with a stiff bow; and the looks of the two parents made Kate wonder suddenly whether John had been successful in his university career. Poor fellow! he did not look remarkably bright. There was no analogy between his looks and Fred Huntley’s sharp clever face—but then he was some years younger than Fred.

“Won’t you be persuaded to stay to dinner?” said Mrs Huntley; “you never can get back in time for your own. We have not seen Kate for ages, nor you either, Dr Mitford. Do stay—my husband and all of them will be back before dinner. Mr Huntley will be so vexed and disappointed if I let you go.”

“But Dulchester, my dear lady,” said the Doctor, rising and making her a bow.

“Oh, Dulchester!—is your heart so much set upon it, Kate?”

Fortunately Kate glanced at her guide before she replied, and saw that he was red with mortification, anticipating her answer. “Oh dear, yes! my heart is set upon it,” she cried. “Dr Mitford has come all the way to make me understand; and, indeed, it is getting late, and we must not stop, even for tea.”

“I will go and see that the carriage is brought round,” said her old cavalier, with alacrity; and he shook hands with Mrs Huntley, who mimicked him as soon as his back was turned with a sweep of her hand and smirk of affability which tried Kate’s gravity much. “Oh, my dear, you don’t know what you are going to encounter,” she said, in a rapid undertone, as soon as he was gone. “I tried to save you from it, but you would not back me up. He is the most dreadful old bore——”

“Hush! I am staying in his house, and they have been very, very kind,” said Kate, with a sudden blush.

“Staying in their house! I must speak to your papa about that, who never will let you come to us. But I did not know you knew the Mitfords, Kate.”

“We did not know them—but—my horse ran away with me—and Dr Mitford’s—son—saved my life.”

This Kate gave forth very slowly, with eyes that glittered with sudden excitement; and Mrs Huntley, for her part, received the news with the most eager interest.

“Oh, was it you?” she cried. “We heard something of it. They say it was quite a wonder that he didn’t lose his own life. But, dear me, Kate! after anything so interesting, how was it that he didn’t drive you himself instead of his papa?”

“I suppose, because he was never consulted,” said Kate, with some indignation; “and now I must not keep Dr Mitford waiting. Mrs Mitford has been so good to me—oh, so kind! She has nursed me as if I had been her own child; and papa let me stay, he was so grateful to them. I don’t know, I am sure, what the son did for me, but I know what the mother has done. She was as kind as if I had been her own child.”

“Her own child!” Mrs Huntley repeated to herself, with bewilderment, when Kate ran down-stairs; “oh yes, indeed! that one can easily understand. What a nice thing for John! But I am sure I should never think of such a little flirt for one of my sons, however rich she was—a spoiled child!”

This would have hurt Kate’s feelings if she had heard it, for she thought she was a favourite of Mrs Huntley’s—and so indeed she was; but it is hard upon a woman to hear unmoved that somebody else’s son has been braver, abler, more successful than her son, even though, as she reminded herself with a toss of her head, her boys had no need for that sort of thing, thank heaven! “Fred shall go, if I can persuade him,” she said within herself, “and spoil that John’s game, though they think so much of him;” and yet there was not a shadow of a reason why Mrs Huntley should wish to thwart that John.

After this Kate had to do the camp, and did it with a heroic show of interest. She got through it, looking up into Dr Mitford’s face with such bright and vivid looks that the good man felt he had at last found a congenial soul. Kate bore this, and she bore the assaults of the unsteady hood, though it gave her yet another thump upon her bonnet, which nearly made an end of that ornament. But there are limits to human nature, and she was very glad when she found herself approaching home. She called the Rectory home with the frankest satisfaction, such as would have awakened many thoughts in Mrs Mitford’s mind. It was sweet to see the pretty irregular house in the evening light, with its shadow turned to the east and all its windows open, and the great sheaves of lilies sending forth their fragrance. John suddenly appeared to open the gate as they drove up, as if he had sprung from the earth; and his mother was standing on the lawn with her white shawl thrown over her, like another flower; and the expedition was over, and the castrum done with, and Dr Mitford pleased, and the bonnet, perhaps, not spoiled for ever. Kate was so glad that she gave Mrs Mitford an unexpected kiss as she jumped lightly down. “How nice it is to have some one waiting for us!” she said, with almost tearful earnestness—the poor motherless girl! Mrs Mitford was touched by the accent, and Kate was touched herself, though of course she must have known how much of her emotion was delight at being free of what she considered a bore. But it was not entirely relief either, and there was some real feeling in the girl’s perverse little heart.

“I am so grieved they cannot come,” said Mrs Mitford, when they were all seated at dinner, which had been delayed. “I am so sorry, my dear, for you; but perhaps you might try a game with John—and the party could be asked for another day.”

“I am so glad,” said Kate. “It is so nice to escape the croquet-parties, and all the stuff one has to think about at home.”

“But, my dear, you must miss your amusements,” said Mrs Mitford. “I should not think a quiet life was the kind of life for you.”

“Changes are what I like,” said Kate, bravely. “I could not live always in a turmoil, and I could not live always in a hermitage. I should like sometimes the one and sometimes the other. The dreadful thing would be, to be always the same.”

Mrs Mitford gave her son a piteous look, and then cast an instinctive glance round the room. She did not herself feel the full meaning that was in her eyes. She glanced at all the signs of her own changeless existence. For years and years she had visited the same places at the same hours, sat down to the same work, made the same engagements, discharged the same duties. The dinner-party, which, contrary to her own lights, she was going to give in honour of Kate, would have the same people at it as had been at her first dinner-party after her wedding. She said to herself that if John were rich he could give his wife a great deal more change; but still there remained the fact that John’s wife would have the parish to think of, and the schools, and the old women. It would not do, alas! it could not do, Mrs Mitford concluded, as she rose from dinner with a sigh. And yet it would be such a thing for John.

And to see poor John’s miserable look when he came into the drawing-room, and found that Kate had a headache and had gone to bed. “It must have been that confounded camp,” he said, through his teeth, which grieved his mother more.

“Oh, my dear, don’t swear,” she said; “things are bad enough without that.”

“What things? and what do you mean, mother?” growled John.

“It is—that girl. I am so sorry she came here—so sorry you saved her, John; that she should come where no one wanted her, disturbing my boy!”