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.