He put the two letters into their envelopes, and sealed and put them into the post with his own hand as he went to the station. He carried all his possessions with him—not merely the portmanteau; and he was dead tired—so tired that he would have passed Fanshawe station and gone on perhaps to London—for he had dropt asleep in the train—but for the guard, who knew him. When he found himself on the little platform at Fanshawe, chilly and stupid as a man is who has just awakened from sleep, the only strong feeling in his mind was an overwhelming desire to get to bed. He did not seem capable of realising that he had got home again, after his disastrous voyage into the world—he only thought of going to sleep; and it was not his mother’s wondering welcome he was thinking of, or the questions they would ask him, but a pleasant vision of his own room, with the fire burning in the grate, and the white fragrant sheets opened up and inviting him to rest. He felt half asleep when he crossed the threshold of the Rectory, and walked into the drawing-room to his mother, who gave a shriek of mingled delight and alarm at so unlooked-for an apparition. “John, you are ill; something has happened,” Mrs Mitford cried out, in an agony of apprehension. “I am only sleepy, mother,” he said. That was all he could say. He sat down and smiled at her, and told her how tired he was. “Nothing particular has happened, except in my own mind,” he added, when he came to himself a little, “and not much even there. I am awfully tired. Don’t ask me anything, and don’t be unhappy. There is nothing to be unhappy about. You shall know it all to-morrow. But please, mother, let me go to bed.”

“And so you shall, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford; “but, oh, my own boy, what is the matter? What can I say to your papa? What is it? Oh, John, I know there is something wrong.”

“Only that I shall go to sleep here,” he said, “and snore—which you never could endure. There is nothing wrong, mamma, only I have walked twenty miles to-day, and I am very tired. I have come home to be put to bed.”

“Then you are ill,” she said. “You have caught one of those dreadful fevers. I see it now. Your eyes are so heavy you can scarcely look at me. You have been in some of the cottages, or in the back streets, where there is always fever; but Jervis shall run for the doctor.”

“A fire in Mr John’s room directly, Jervis—directly, mind; and some boiling water to make him a hot drink—he has caught a bad cold. Oh, my dear, you are sure that is all? And, John, you have really, really come home—to stay? You don’t mean to stay?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” he said. “I have left Camelford. I have come back like a piece of bad money. But, mother, don’t ask me any questions to-night.”

“Not one,” she answered promptly; and then besieged him with her eyes—“Twenty miles, my dear boy! what a long walk! no wonder you are tired. But what put it into your head, John? Never mind, my dear. I did not mean to ask any more questions. But, dear me! where could you want to go that was twenty miles off? That is what bewilders me.”

“You shall hear all about it to-morrow,” said John, rising to his feet. He was so tired that he staggered as he rose, and his mother turned upon him eyes in which another kind of fear flashed up. She grew frightened at his weakness, and at the pale smile that came over his face.

“Yes, my dear, go to bed—that will be the best thing,” she said, looking scared and miserable. And it went to John’s heart to see the painful looks she gave him, though it was with a mixture of indignation and amusement that he perceived the new turn her thoughts had taken. He could not but laugh as he put his arm round her to say good-night.

“It is not that either,” he said; “you need not mistrust me. Staying in Camelford will not answer, mother. I must find some other way. And I have had a long walk. I am better now that my head is under my mother’s wing. Good-night.”

“I will bring you your hot drink, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford. She followed him in her great wonder to the foot of the stairs, and watched him go up wearily with his candle, and then she returned and made the hot drink, and carried it up-stairs with her own hands. Was it all over?—was he hers again?—her boy, with nobody else to share him? “If he only escapes without a heartbreak, I shall be the happiest woman in the world,” she said to herself, as she went down-stairs again, wiping tears of joy out of her eyes. Without a heartbreak! while John laid his head on the familiar pillow and felt as if he had died. He had no heart any longer to break. He must have something to do, and no doubt he would get up next day and go and do something, if it was only working in the garden; but as for the heart, that which gives all the zest and all the bitterness to life, that was dead. His life was over and ended, and it seemed to him as if he could never come alive again.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Life at Fernwood had been going on much the same as usual during these days which were so decisive to John. It was Fred Huntley’s inquiry as to when she had heard from John which had inspired Kate’s note to him. She had been half unhappy before, and full of wondering thoughts; but that question roused her. She could not let her love glide away from her without a word; she did not want to lose him; she could not believe it possible that there was any danger of losing him. All the rest were very well to talk to, or to flirt with, or dance with, or make useful. But John was John, and she had no desire to put any one else in his place. Kate said this to herself, and then she went down-stairs and yawned behind her fan at the other people who had so little to say, and was glad when Fred Huntley—but not till half the evening was over—came to her side to talk to her. He was a clever talker, and managed her very skilfully; and Kate could not make out how it was that all the other people were so stupid. She gave her father a little defiant glance when she caught his eye. “Papa seems to think I have no right to talk to any one now,” she said, half to herself, thus making Fred her confidant unawares.

“Does he say so?” asked Fred.

“Oh no, not in so many words—but he watches me as if I could not take care of myself. It is too bad. I don’t think he ever made himself so disagreeable all my life before. I had a great deal better stay in my own room where nobody need see me. To think of papa, you know, growing jealous for John——”

She was so thoughtless that the idea had begun to move her to amusement; when she suddenly remembered words which Fred himself had said to her not so very long ago, and stopped short suddenly, growing very red, and naturally giving double point by her full stop and her blush to the suggestive words. “I mean it is so odd not to be able to do and say what one likes,” she went on hurriedly, faltering, and growing redder and redder in her consciousness. Fred was standing before her, leaning over the back of a chair, and looking very earnestly in her face.

“So far as I am concerned,” he said, with a smile, “I will not have your liberty curbed. You must do and say what you like without any thought of me.”

“Of you, Mr Huntley!” said Kate, with some confusion. “What should papa’s nonsense have to do with you?”

“Miss Crediton,” said Fred, seriously, “don’t you know me well enough to be frank with me at least? I might pretend to think I had nothing to do with it, but I should not deceive you. Mr Crediton is concerned for his guest and not for his daughter; but, I repeat, so far as I am concerned, you are not to be curbed in your freedom. I prefer rather to be tortured than to be sent away.”

“Tortured!” Kate echoed, under her breath, growing pale and growing red. It was wrong to permit such things to be said to her, and she had already reproved him for it. But still there was something which half pleased her in words which meant so much more than they said. She had a little struggle with herself before she could make up her mind to resist temptation, and withdraw from this dangerous amusement; and when at length she did so, and plunged into conversation with the nearest old lady, Kate felt that nothing less than the highest virtue could have moved her to such a sacrifice. It was a great deal more amusing to sit and listen to Fred Huntley’s talk, and watch him gliding along the edge of the precipice, just clearing it by a hair’s-breadth, filling the air with captivating suggestions of devotion. Could it be possible that he was so fond of her—a man of the world like Fred? Kate was one of those women who feel a kindness for the men who love them. It may be love out of place—presumptuous, uncalled-for, even treacherous; but still, poor fellow, how sad that he should be so fond of me! the woman says to herself, and is softly moved towards him with a kind of almost affectionate pity. This was heightened, in the present case, by the fact that Fred Huntley was not at all a man likely to yield to such influences; and then he too was making a struggle against temptation in which surely he deserved a little sympathy. If at any time he should be overcome by it, and speak out, then of course she would be compelled to give him a distinct answer and send him away. It would be a pity, Kate thought, with a sigh; but in the mean time he was very interesting, and she was sorry he should be so fond of her, poor fellow! Thus it will be seen that she had not consciously faltered in her allegiance. She meant to say No to Fred, firmly and clearly, if ever he should speak to her in unmistakable words; but in the mean time she was interested in him, and very curious to know what next he would say.

It was thus without any sense of wrong-doing that Kate found herself walking along the footpath with Fred Huntley by her side on the October noon when John saw them. She was quite innocent of any evil intention. He had disappeared with the rest of the gentlemen in the morning, and Kate had not asked either herself or any one else what had become of him; and she had undertaken to walk down to the row of cottages outside the park gates as a matter of kindness to the housekeeper, who was busy. “I will go,” she had said quite simply, when Mrs Horner apologised for not having seen and given work to a poor needlewoman there. “Oh, Miss Kate, that will be so good of you—and it is just a nice walk,” the housekeeper had said; so that nothing could be more virtuous than the expedition altogether. Kate had not even meant to go alone; her companion, one of the young ladies of the party, had failed her at the last moment by reason of a headache, or some other young-lady-like ailment, and how could Kate tell that she should meet Fred Huntley coming out of the wood just as the trees screened her from the windows of the house? But she was not sorry she had met him. Walking along by herself in the silence, she had grown a little sad and confused in her mind about John and circumstances generally. She had not much time to think, with all the duties of mistress of the house on her head. But when she was alone she could not elude the questions—What did John mean by his silence?—was he unhappy, poor fellow? Was it her fault or his fault? Would the time ever come when Mr Crediton would consent, and everything would be arranged? Should she be able to make him happy if they were married? All these questions were passing through Kate’s mind. “He takes everything so seriously,” she said to herself; “he thinks one means it, and one so seldom means it.” This she said with a little plaint within her own bosom. And, if it must be confessed, a momentary comparison passed through her mind. Fred Huntley would be so very, very much easier to get on with; he would demand nothing more than she could give, whereas there was no limit to John’s demands. The comparison was involuntary, and she was ashamed of herself for making it, but still it had been made; and the next moment Fred Huntley himself had appeared to her stepping over the stile out of the wood.

But the grave look that was on her face, and the silence so unusual to her, which John had seen and taken for symptoms of other feelings, were in reality caused by the gravity of her thoughts about himself more than by any other cause. She had been almost glad to have her solitude interrupted in order to escape from her thoughts, but they were still in possession of her mind; and when John had heard their voices in the distance, the two were but beginning to talk. Their conversation was quite unobjectionable: he might have heard every word, as she said afterwards. It was kind of Fred Huntley, seeing her so serious, to try to take her mind off her own troubles. He did not launch forth into foolish talk, such as that which he permitted himself sometimes to indulge in, when their tête-à-tête went on under the eyes of a roomful of people. He began to tell her about his own prospects and intentions; how he had made up his mind to offer himself as a candidate to represent Camelford at the next election. He had been asked to do so, and he had given a great deal of thought to the subject. “It binds one, and takes away one’s personal liberty,” he had said; “but, after all, one never has any personal liberty—and something certain to do, that one can take an interest in, is always, I suppose,” he added, with a sigh, “next best.”

“Next best to what?” cried Kate, but fortunately for herself left him no time to answer. “I never pretended to be strong-minded,” she ran on; “but to help to govern one’s own country must be the finest thing in the world. Oh, please, don’t smile like that. You think so, or you would not make up your mind to take so much trouble for nothing at all.”

“Much the member for Camelford will have to do in the governing of the country!” said Fred; “but still it is true enough: and I suppose when a man is bored to death on a committee, he has as fine a sense that if he die it is in the service of his country, as if he were burrowing in the trenches somewhere. Yes, I suppose when there is nothing pleasanter in hand it is the right sort of thing to do.”

“I don’t know what pleasanter sort of thing you could have in hand,” said Kate.

“No, perhaps not; but I do. I can fancy quite a different sort of life—something out of my reach as far as that branch is,” said Fred, carelessly catching at a high bough which seemed to hang miles over his head against the smiling blue. “Hollo! it is not so far out of reach neither,” he added with a quick glance at her, and speaking half under his breath.

“I wish it had been out of your reach,” said Kate; “just look what you have done! sprinkled me all over and spoiled my ribbon; and the dew is so cold,” she said, with a little shiver. “Mr Huntley, I think I should prefer Parliament if I were you.”

“It will be the wisest way,” said Fred, momentarily roused out of his good temper; and then he expressed a hundred regrets, and made his moan over the blue ribbon, which, however, it was decided, would be dried by the breeze long before they reached the cottage, and was not spoiled after all.

“What a pity there is a penny post!” said Kate; “how we should have teased your life out to give us franks, as people used to do for their letters. An M.P. was worth something in those days; but when there is anything going on, of course you can get us tickets and good places everywhere. The first time you make a speech, I shall go to the ladies' gallery. I wonder what it will be about!”

“And so do I,” said Fred; “but I fear it will be inaudible in the ladies' gallery. When you are all enjoying yourselves at home after the fatigues of the season, will you compassionate an unhappy man in town in August for the sake of his country? Do you think it is worth such a sacrifice?”

“What a different life it will be!” said Kate, with a half-sigh. “It is all very well to laugh, but how odd it is to think what different lives people have—some in the world and some out of it! I should like to go into Parliament, and be a great potentate too. I daresay it sounds very ridiculous, but I should. I am not so clever as you are, and I have no education; but I hope I understand things better than old Mr Vivian, or Sir Robert, papa’s great friend. And yet I shall never have anything better to do than giving things out of a store-room, and spending as little money as possible. How very funny it is!”

“Do you give the things out of the store-room, and keep accounts of the tea and sugar? I acknowledge that must be very funny,” said Fred.

“Of course I don’t do it now. There is Mrs Horner to take all the trouble; but, you know—hereafter——” When she had said this, Kate stopped with a sudden blush; of course he knew that John Mitford’s wife would have no housekeeper, and would be obliged to spend as little money as possible. But somehow the contrast galled her, and she stopped short with momentary ill-humour. Why should fate be so different? Why should one be so well off and another so poor? Kate felt it as much for the moment as if she had been a poor needlewoman, making gorgeous garments for a fine lady. It gave her a little angry sense of inferiority; could it be that she might look up to Fred Huntley and consider his acquaintance as an honour in the days to come? She was angry with him for his hopes and his ambition, notwithstanding that he had said it would but be next best.

“Hereafter——” said Fred, “how little any of us know about it! but if there is one creature in the world who can choose her own future, and make it what she pleases, it must be you,” he continued, in a low hurried tone. Kate walked on silent as if she had not heard him. They had reached the lodge gates, and were close to the cottage where she was going. She made no reply, took no notice, but she had heard him all the same. She went into the cottage without any suggestion that he should accompany her, and Fred wisely disappeared, leaving her to walk home by herself. This was one great difference between him and John. John would not have left her, would not have dreamed of sacrificing the delight of her society for any piece of policy. But Fred was clear-sighted, and felt that for his ultimate success this was the best. She was half disappointed, half satisfied to find that he was not waiting for her. She had so many things to think of, and there were so many things she did not want to think of. All the delights of the election time which was coming on dazzled Kate. She had only to say a word and she would be the queen of the occasion, in the heart of all the delightful bustle and excitement and hope and fear. She could not go into Parliament in her own person and help to govern her country, but the next to that would be doing it in the person of her husband. And where was there any likelihood that John would ever give her such a gratification? What he would give her would be the soberest domestic life, weighing out of tea and sugar from the store-room, and much trouble over the necessary economies. “Provided that we are so well off as to have a store-room!” she said to herself. But Fred Huntley’s wife would have no such necessity. She would have plenty to spend and something to spare. She was not thinking of herself as Mrs Fred Huntley; she was rather contrasting that fortunate woman with Mrs John Mitford, who would not be nearly so well off. It would be so droll, Kate thought, to see that lady in the prettiest costumes possible, coming to call upon herself, who probably for economy would find it best always to wear a black silk gown. And then it would be so much easier for the other to get on. Her husband would be so manageable in comparison. He would be good-tempered and polite, and would never dream of taking offence; whereas John’s wife would have to watch his eye, and demean herself accordingly. Kate had given more than one sigh before she got home, of half envy. Life would be so much more easy for Mrs Fred. She would have it in her power to skim lightly over the top of the waves as Kate loved to do, instead of sounding all kinds of depths. She sighed, not because she was faithless to John or had ceased to love him, but only at the thought of how much easier a life that other woman would have; and an easy life was pleasant to Kate.

I don’t know if it was this conversation which made Fred Huntley so over-bold; but in the evening he spoke as he had never yet ventured to speak. It was the evening which John spent in his dismal little parlour, weary, and wrapt in the stillness of despair, writing his letters before he went home. At Fernwood the young people had got up an impromptu dance. There were a few people to dinner from some of the neighbouring houses, and this infusion of novelty stimulated the home party. And the wind had changed, and all the frost in the air had disappeared, or at least so the foolish boys and girls, heated with dancing, chose to believe; and they had opened the door of the conservatory, and even strayed out into the moonlight between the dances, without paying the least attention to any warning. However strong the reasons had been which led Kate to decline all private conversation with Fred Huntley, she could not possibly refuse to dance with him, nor could she refuse to take a turn with him through the conservatory, as all the others were doing. And it was there, in the semidark, with the moonlight shining in through the dark plants and unseen flowers, that he spoke out, no longer making use of any parable. He told her in so many words that he was a more fit mate for her than John. He argued the question with her, point by point, for Kate was not wise enough to take refuge in a distinct, unexplained No, but went on the foolish idea that he was her friend, and John’s friend, and that she ought to convince him that he was wrong. “Oh don’t!” she said, “please, don’t. We have always been such friends. Why should you break it all off and make me a kind of an enemy now at the last? You never used to care for me in that way. Oh, please, let us forget it was ever said.”

“But I cannot forget it, though you may, Kate,” he said, in a voice which was so full of feeling that Kate’s curiosity was vividly awakened: (I never thought he would have felt anything so much, she said to herself, flattered and wondering; and rather anxious to know how far this unlooked-for sentiment would carry him). “Kate, we can’t go on just being friends. If you knew what I have suffered to see you belonging to another man! I have not a word to say against him. No, I hate him for your sake; but there is not a word to be said against him. The only thing I wonder is, how a fellow so honourable and high-minded should have asked you when he knew he had nothing to offer you. It would have been more like John Mitford to have broken his heart and held his peace.”

A strange little cry came from Kate’s lips. “Oh!” she said, with a startled look in his face, “how strange that you should be trying to undermine him, and yet know him so well as that!”

“I am not trying to undermine him; I believe in my heart that I would rather the one of us had you who could make you the happiest. It sounds strange, but it is true. If I grant that he loves you as well as I do, would not that be allowing a great deal? but, Kate, think what a change it would be for you; and he would not know so well as I should how to make you happy,” Fred added, bending over her, and pressing close to him the hand which still rested on his arm. It was wrong of Kate not to have withdrawn her hand from his arm. She tried to do it now, but it was held fast, and a piteous prayer made to her not to go from him as if she were angry. “You don’t dislike me for your friend,” Fred pleaded, “and why should you be angry because I cannot help loving you beyond friendship?—is it my fault?”

“Oh, please, don’t talk like this,” cried Kate, in her distress. “I am not angry. I don’t want to be unkind. I want you to be my friend still. This is only a passing fancy. It will go away, and we shall be just as we were. But it is wrong, when you know I am engaged to him, to try to turn me against John.”

“It would be if you were married to him,” said Fred; “but, Kate, because I love you, must I be blind to what is best for you? He is not like you, neither am I like you; we are neither of us worthy to kiss the hem of your dress——”

“Nonsense!” cried Kate, vigorously, almost freeing herself; for this was so much out of Fred’s way, that it moved her in the midst of so grave a situation almost to the point of laughter.

“It is not nonsense; I know what you think. You think it is the sort of thing that lovers say, and that I don’t mean it; but I do mean it. We are neither of us good enough; but I understand you best, Kate—yes, don’t deny it. I know you best, and your ways. I should not tease you. I should not ask too much. And with me you would have the life you are used to. With him you don’t know what kind of life you may have, and neither does he. Kate, there are women who could bear that sort of thing, but not you.”

“Mr Huntley, I cannot discuss it with you,” said Kate, half in despair; “pray, pray, let me go!”

“You are angry,” he said—“angry with me who have known you all your life, because you have found out I love you too well.”

“I am not angry,” she cried; “but oh, please, let me go. You know I ought not to stand here and listen to you. Should you like it if you were him? Oh, let me go!”

“Kate,” he cried in her ear, “don’t hate me for what I am going to say; if I were him, and knew you had listened to another, I should feel how it was, and accept my fate.”

Kate’s hot spirit blazed up, and the tears sprang to her eyes. She drew her hand away almost violently. “That is well,” she cried—“that is well! that you should be the one to blame me for listening; but I shall do it no more.”

“It is because you are driving me half mad,” he said.

And what was Kate to do? It was such a strange sensation to see Fred Huntley, a man of the world, standing there pleading before her, driven half mad. Was it possible? If it had been any other man indeed. But Fred! And his voice was full of emotion, his hands trembled, he pleaded with an earnestness that filled her with mingled pity and curiosity and amaze. “Oh, hush, and don’t think any more of it,” she said. “If you will forget it, I shall. Am I one to make people unhappy? Give me your arm back to the drawing-room, and let us say no more about it. I must not stay longer with you here.”

“I will take you back to the drawing-room,” he said, “and if you say I am to give up hope, I will do it; but, Kate, don’t fix my fate till you know a little better. I am so willing, so very willing, to wait. All I want is that you should know I am here utterly at your command—and you won’t wring my heart talking of him? Yes, do—wring my heart as you please, but don’t send me away. I am willing to wait for my answer as long as you have the heart to keep me—only don’t send me away.”

“Oh! how can you speak of an answer?” cried Kate, under her breath. They were on the threshold of the lighted drawing-room by this time, and perhaps he did not hear that faint protestation. He took her to her seat, not with the covert care which he had been lavishing upon her for so long, but with all the signs of the tenderest devotion. She herself, being excited and distracted by what had just passed, was not aware of the difference; but everybody else was. And they had been a long time together in the conservatory, quite too long for an interview between an engaged young lady and a man who was not her betrothed. And there was a flush upon Kate’s cheeks, and Fred was eager and excited, and kept near her, without any pretence of making himself generally agreeable. And she looked half afraid of him, and would not dance any more—two signs which were very striking. “Depend upon it, something is going on in that quarter,” one of the elder ladies said to the other. “Little jilt!” said the second; and if Lady Winton had been there, who felt herself entitled to speak, Kate would no doubt have heard a great deal more about it before she escaped to her own room to try and realise what it was.

CHAPTER XXIX.

It would be vain to attempt to give any panorama of Kate’s thoughts when she had finally taken refuge in her room, and shut out even her maid. The first fire of the season was chirruping in the grate, and there were a good many candles about, for Kate was fond of a great deal of light. She threw herself into her favourite easy-chair by the fire, and clasped her hands across her forehead, and tried very hard to think. There are many girls, no doubt, who would have felt that Fred Huntley had insulted them by such a declaration, with his full knowledge of all the previous circumstances. But Kate could not cut the knot in that summary manner. He was not insulting her. Before he had said a word, had not she herself taken that alternative into consideration? It was but this very day that she had made that half-envying comparison between herself and the problematical Mrs Fred Huntley; and people do not make such comparisons without some faint notion that a choice might be possible. Besides, Kate was not the kind of girl to be insensible to the reason of the matter. It was perfectly true what Fred Huntley had said. In every way in which the question could be looked at, he was more suitable to her than John. And he would be a great deal easier to get on with. He would not ask so much; he would be quite content with what she could give: whereas the question was, would John ever be content? And Fred would satisfy Mr Crediton, and make everything easy; and nobody knew better than Kate how unlikely it was that John could ever satisfy her father, or that their marriage should take place by anything less than a miracle. The reader will think that she was thus giving up the whole question, but this was not the fact. She was as far from giving John up as she had been a month before, when she went to see him in Camelford; but she had a candid mind, and could not help considering the question on its merits.

And then it would be impossible to deny that she had a kindness for Fred. He had been very “nice” all this autumn—very attentive and assiduous, and anxious to smooth her path for her. To be sure he had not been quite disinterested; but then, when is a man disinterested? One does not expect it of them, Kate reflected; in short, perhaps one prefers, on the whole, that they should look for a reward, to be given or withheld as the idol wills. This sense of power was very strong in Kate’s mind. She liked to think that her hand could dispense life and death; and though the alternative was very thrilling, and made her heart beat loudly, and the blood rush to her face, yet it was not exactly a painful feeling. And then she was very sweet-tempered and sympathetic: it was hard for her to make up her mind to disappoint and grieve any one. She would be sincerely sorry for the man she was obliged to refuse; and if she could have managed it so that Madeline Winton, or any other nice girl with whom she was intimate, should have suited the taste of that man, it would have been a great relief to her. This thought flashed across her mind more than once in her disquietude; a fact which sufficiently shows how different were the feelings with which she regarded the two candidates for her favour. Such a transfer of affection would have been out of the question with John; but it would not be out of the question with Fred.

Then Kate took to thinking of his earnestness, of the look almost of passion in his face. Fred Huntley to look at any woman like that—to say that he was being driven mad—to plead with such humility! No doubt it was a very astounding thought, almost more extraordinary than any amount of devotion from John, who was a passionate being by nature. And then it would be so easy to get on with Fred! he would understand without difficulty those tastes and habits to which John could never do more than assent with a sigh. What a dilemma it was for a girl to be placed in! Kate had clasped her hands over her eyes that she might think the better, and let her fire go out, and was stopped in her cogitations by the chill which stole over her. When she roused herself up the hearth was quite black, and seemed to be giving forth cold instead of warmth—and the candles were all burning silently, with now and then a little twinkling of the small steady flames, as if they were sharers in her secret, and knew more about it than she did. She crept to bed very cold and disturbed and uncomfortable, saying to herself now, Poor John! and now, Poor Fred! with painful impartiality. I think, for my own part, that it said wonders for her real faithfulness that she was thus impartial in her thoughts; for Fred was so much more eligible in every way, so much more suitable, more likely to please everybody, more easy to get on with, that there must have been a wonderful balance of feeling on the other side to keep the scales even. John was a very troublesome, unmanageable lover; he ruffled her by his passion, his fondness, his susceptibilities. She could not marry him except by the sacrifice of many things that were very important to her, and after going through all the agonies of a long, stormy, much-interrupted engagement; whereas everything was smooth and pleasant on the other side. And yet her heart, if it stood tolerably even between them, had not yet swayed one step further off than the middle from her uncomfortable lover; which, considering all Fred’s unmistakable advantages, surely said a great deal for Kate.

She got up in the morning with a headache, and without having come to any decision. The thought of meeting Fred calmly before the eyes of all those people, as if nothing had passed, had a curious kind of excitement in it. It was not her fault; and yet she looked forward to meeting him with a certain flutter of semi-agitation, which was not diminished by the fact that he was more assiduous in his attentions than he had ever ventured to be before, or had any right to be. After breakfast Mr Crediton sent to her to go to him in the library, which was a very alarming summons. She grew pale in the midst of her companions when it was delivered to her. “Kate, I know you are going to be scolded,” said one of them; “I declare she is trembling. Fancy Kate being frightened for her papa.” “I am sure she deserves to be scolded,” said an elder young lady, gravely. “Do I?” cried poor Kate; and she went away half crying, for it was hard upon her to be blamed. She could not bear it, even when she was indifferent to her censors. It hurt her—she who had always been petted by all the world. She went away as near crying as it is consistent with the dignity of a young lady of nineteen to be; and if either of the two had crossed her path and proposed instant elopement, I almost think she would have consented. But John was at Fanshawe, separated from her by more than distance; and Fred’s good angel had not whispered to him to throw himself at that moment in her way.

Mr Crediton received her with a certain solemnity, and with a very grave countenance. He made her sit down opposite to him, and looked her in the face. “Kate,” he said, “I have sent for you to have some very serious talk with you. You have got yourself into a grave dilemma, and I think you want my advice.”

Kate was very much frightened, but she was not a girl to lose her head even at such a crisis. She faced the foe courageously, though her cheek grew pale. “I must always be the better for having your advice, papa,” she said; “but I don’t know of any dilemma. Everything is exactly as it was.”

“I don’t see how that can be,” said Mr Crediton, quietly. “Kate, Fred Huntley has been with me this morning. He is perfectly honourable and straightforward in his mode of action, but I am not so sure about you. He tells me he has asked you to marry him—and notwithstanding that he has got no definite answer, he thought it right to come to me.”

“Answer!” cried Kate; “what answer could I give? He knew I was engaged as well as you do. Is it my fault, papa? Can I keep a man from making a fool of himself? He knew of my engagement as well as you.”

“Yes,” said Mr Crediton; “and he knew that John Mitford went away hurriedly after a three-days' visit, and that there has been no communication between you for some time. Oh, I am not the culprit. I don’t examine your letters. It appears you told him; and, as a justification of what he has done, he repeated it to me.”

“Then it was very, very nasty of him,” said Kate, with tears in her eyes; “and I will never tell him anything again as long as I live.”

“I hope at least you won’t talk to him on this subject,” said her father, gravely. “I have let you have your own way heretofore, Kate. I have given Mr Mitford the best chance I could of proving what was in him; and if you like to persevere, I shall not interfere. But if you don’t care to persevere, it is a different matter. Huntley seems to think you will not. Wait a little, please, till I have said what I have to say. There cannot be a moment’s doubt as to which of the two I should prefer for a son-in-law. Fred Huntley has distinguished himself already, though he is so young. He could surround you with every luxury and give you a good position, and everything that heart can desire. And he suits me. He is thoroughly sensible, and full of good feeling; but he is not highflown. I should get on a great deal better with him than I ever could do with Mitford; and, I believe, so would you.”

“Papa!” This exclamation was not surprise, but a deprecating, pleading, remonstrating protestation. She made him no further answer, one way or another; but only looked in his face with wistful eyes.

“I believe you would,” said Mr Crediton, stoutly. “You must have felt already, however you may hesitate to say it, that in certain matters this whole business is a great blunder. I am not saying a word against Mitford. We have the greatest reason to be grateful to him. But, Kate, great mistakes have been made out of gratitude—the very gravest mistakes; and you may be sure that your engagement is to him a very equivocal advantage. He feels it, though he cannot be the first to speak.”

“What does he feel? how do you know?” cried Kate; and there came such a sudden chill over her, that the very blood in her veins seemed frozen—a sensation she had never experienced before in all her life.

“It is quite clear what he feels,” said Mr Crediton; “he feels that you are out of his sphere. He sees what kind of a life you live here, and he is bewildered. How is he to give you all that, or a shadow of it? It is not difficult to divine what he feels; and the thought makes him half morose, as he was when he was here. He cannot bear to lose you, I believe; and yet he is gradually making up his mind that he must lose you. Poor fellow! I for one am very sorry for him; and unless you open a way to him out of it, I don’t see what he is to do.”

“Papa,” said Kate, with her cheeks flaming, “if he has ever given you any reason to think that he wants to be out of it, you have only to let me know.”

“I don’t want to be unjust,” said Mr Crediton, “to him or to any one. He has never spoken to me on the subject. It is not likely he should. No man could come to your father, Kate, and say, 'I have made a mistake.' I should kick him out of the house, probably, however glad I might be to hear it. And John Mitford is not the man to do anything of the kind; but his feelings may be easily divined for all that.”

Kate sat silent, with her eyes cast down, and twisted her handkerchief in her fingers. Her cheeks were burning, her eyes hot, her heart beating loud. Perhaps it might be true. While she had been calmly comparing her two lovers, feeling herself elevated in a sweet supremacy over them, and free to make her choice, it was possible that her chain had become bondage to one of them. He had gone away hurriedly, it was true. He had spoken very strangely when he went away, and he had not written to her for two long weeks. So long, indeed, had he kept silence, that she had written to him making a kind of appeal. These facts, no doubt, strengthened every word her father said, and gave to them a certain appearance of reality. Her cheeks burned, and seemed to scorch all the moisture out of her eyes; and yet she felt that only the strongest effort kept her from bursting into tears. It was a kind of relief to her when the door opened, and a man came in with Mr Crediton’s letters. At least they prevented the necessity of any answer. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, examining closely, as if it were a matter of the last importance, the embroidered cipher on her handkerchief, while her father was thus occupied. Kate took no notice how many letters he read—they were nothing to her; nor did she observe the keen glance upward which he gave at her when he had read the first he opened. She did not even remark that the crackling of the paper ceased, and there was an interval of complete stillness. When he spoke to her she started, and came back as if from a long distance. “Yes, papa,” she said, mechanically, without lifting her eyes.

“I did not think it would have come so soon,” said Mr Crediton; “and it is very strange that it should have come at this moment. He has decided the question for himself, Kate, as, one time or other, I thought he would. Look here.”

It was John’s letter he pushed across the table to her, with a feeling that it had arrived at the very moment it was wanted, at the handiest moment. And Mr Crediton was glad; but at the same time he was struck with a little compunction when he saw how eagerly Kate clutched at it, and how the colour went and came on her face. She read it without a pause, flashing her eye over its contents in a way very different from Mr Crediton’s deliberate reading. She had grown breathless in her eagerness. She threw it down on the table, yet did not leave her hold of it, and stretched across to look at the little heap of letters which remained before him. “There must be one for me,” she cried; “of course he must have explained all this in his letter to me.” When she saw that there was none for her, she rose hurriedly and rang the bell, her father all the while looking on with an amazement which he could not express in words. Was this Kate, this hasty excited creature, full of anxiety and suspense? “Go and see if there are any letters for me,” she said, imperiously, to the servant who answered the bell. She would not believe it; she stood angry and feverish, leaning against the mantelpiece with John’s letter in her hand. “The letters have been taken up-stairs, ma’am, but there are none for you,” said the man, re-entering with a tray in his hand on which were several bundles of papers carefully separated. She rushed across the room to look at them. There were half-a-dozen at least for Fred Huntley, and some for the other members of the party who were out shooting, but nothing for Miss Crediton. Kate dismissed the servant with a little wave of her hand and walked back to the fire, and stooped down over it to warm herself. She was utterly dismayed, and the ground seemed suddenly cut away from under her very feet. Her heart beat so that she could not speak a word. Was it true, then, all this that had been said to her? Her father turned his chair towards her, and the sight of his child thus stupefied with sudden pain, and half incredulous of the shock she had just received, went to his heart. But yet in his heart he believed it was best for him to drive the stroke home, and not to soothe her by suggestions that the explanation might yet come, such as occurred to him in the first softening of his thoughts.

“My darling!” he said, “of course you feel it. I feel it so much for you, Kate, that I could almost grieve, though I know it to be for the best. Make up your mind at once to think no more of him. It will be better for you both. It is a shock, but you must have been prepared for the shock. You have trifled with Fred Huntley’s feelings for a long time, as you ought not to have done had you not been more or less prepared for this. And, Kate, there is no reason why you should not reward him now.”

“Reward him! when it is he who has done it,” said Kate, under her breath.

“That is not the case; you must be aware that is not the case. I have watched you all too closely to believe in that. You have done it yourself, Kate; and, if you would believe me, this is the very best thing that could have happened. The slight must hurt, of course, at first——”

“Slight! papa, do you know what you are saying? It is worse than a slight. Oh, how shall I bear it?” said Kate, crushing up John’s letter in her clenched hands.

“So I think, my dear,” said Mr Crediton, quietly. “I could not have supposed Mitford capable of anything of the kind. But it is best that he should have done it in this decisive way—better than hanging you up for months, or years, if he had his way. And the very best answer I can make is to tell him that—that you have listened to Fred. My dear, don’t turn away so impatiently. You have used him very badly if you mean anything else. He is very fond of you, poor fellow! And, Kate, I can’t tell how deeply, how much, it would gratify your father,” he added, putting his arm round her, and drawing her close to him. Kate had gone through all the stages of passion—she had been agitated, disturbed, startled, driven into amazement and indignation and rage. She was trembling all over with excitement; and now, in the course of nature, it was time for tears to come to relieve her hot eyes. She felt herself drawn into her father’s arms, and then the storm broke forth. She could never lose her father, whoever she might lose. She leant her head upon him, and covered her face with her hands, and sobbed upon his breast. “Papa, let me stay with you: I care for nothing but you,” she cried, with a broken voice like a child’s; and he heard her heart beating in the pain of this first grand emergency, like some violent imprisoned thing labouring to escape out of its cage.

“My poor child!” he said, holding her close. He was glad of it, and yet it hurt him too because it hurt his daughter. At that moment he could almost have called John back, pleased as he was to have him gone. He held her close, patting her softly with his hand, saying nothing till the outburst was over; and then, when he felt her stir in his arms and lean less heavily against him, he bent down and kissed her and spoke.

“My own Kate,” he said, “take your father’s advice for once. Let it be you to make the change, and not him. Let me call poor Huntley and make him happy. You like him, though you may not think it: you have chosen his society more than that of any one here. Do you think I have not watched you? and I know. My dear, your delicacy is wounded, your feelings have had a great shock; but you will soon learn it is for the best, and Fred will make you happier than you ever could have been. Let me call the poor fellow now.”

“No, no, not now,” cried Kate, with her face hidden—“not now. Papa, it is with you I want to stay.”

“With me and with Fred,” said Mr Crediton. “He will be a son to me, Kate. He will not take you away from me. It is what I have wished for years. You will make us both very happy, my darling,” her father went on pleading. “Let me call him now.”

“Oh, papa, let me go! He is out,” said Kate, in a kind of despair, raising herself from his arms. She wanted to get away to be by herself, to think what it all meant, and scarcely knew or understood what she said.

“He cannot be far off. Let me go and find him,” said Mr Crediton; “you would make me so happy, Kate.”

“Oh, papa, don’t kill me!—not now. I would do anything to make you happy; but not now—I cannot bear any more.”

“Then, my darling, I will not press you; but later—when you have had time to think—say at five o’clock; come to me at five o’clock. You have made him very wretched and treated him very badly, and me too; but you will make it up to us, my own Kate?”

“Please let me go,” she said, wearily, drawing herself out of his arms, and making visible a face which was no longer flushed and beautiful, but very pale, scared, marked with tears, and reluctant to face the light.

“You shall go,” said her father, tenderly, leading her to the door. “But remember at five o’clock—promise that you will come at five o’clock.”

“Whenever you please—what does it matter?” sighed poor Kate. He repeated the hour again in his anxiety, but she paid no attention. She ran up-stairs as soon as she had escaped from him, a little palefaced woe-begone ghost. Some one met her on the stairs, but she did not stop to see who it was. She did not even care to have her emotion perceived, as she would have done under other circumstances. She did not care for anything but getting to a shelter and hiding herself, and asking somebody (was it herself or some hidden counsellor she should find there?) what did it all mean?

Kate had never been very unhappy before all her life, and she did not know how to be very unhappy. She pulled all the blinds down impatiently, thinking it was wicked that the day should be so bright, and then threw herself upon her little white bed. It was not that she wanted to lie down, or to be in darkness, but only that the crisis was so strange, and she felt it necessary to conform to it. She had been thinking of John when she rose that morning, but thinking of him in such a different way, measuring him with Fred Huntley, then asking herself if it would be most for her own good to keep him or to put him aside. And lo! in a moment, here were the tables turned. He had not even the grace to deliberate or give her warning what he was going to do, but did it on the moment. She could not even upbraid him, for he had gone without saying where he was. He had plucked himself out of her fingers while she had been weighing him, balancing him. Was it not a just punishment? But he did not know that, and she had done nothing, so far as he was aware, that could give him any warrant to treat her so summarily. She lay there and shut her eyes, and rocked herself, and moaned a little. And then she opened them very wide, lay still, and gazed at the drawn blinds with her heart fluttering loudly, scarcely able to keep still with mortification and suppressed rage. Yes, he might give her up; but if he had word sent to him that she was engaged to Fred Huntley, he would feel it—oh, he would feel it! trust him for that. And Kate repeated to herself with feverish eagerness, “At five o’clock.” She longed for the hour to come that she might give him this return-blow; and then she turned and rocked herself and moaned again, feeling such a dreadful pain—a pain she could not account for in her perverse little heart.

When the bell rang for luncheon Parsons came into the room, bouncing, as Kate thought, with her ribbons and her black silk apron, humming a song to herself. “Goodness gracious me!” she cried, suddenly restraining her sprightly steps when she became conscious of her mistress’s presence. “I did not know as you were here, Miss,” said Parsons; “I beg your pardon, I am sure. Is it a headache, Miss?”

“Oh, go away and don’t bother me; don’t you see I am not fit to talk to anyone?” cried Kate.

“If it’s a bad headache, Miss, there is nothing like lying down, and to bathe the head with a little eau-de-Cologne and water. It’s what I always do when I have the headache,” said Parsons, bustling and pouring out into a basin the pungent fragrant water. Kate allowed herself to be ministered to without any visible impatience. She did not feel so abandoned by the world when even her maid was by her. And the eau-de-Cologne, she thought, did her a little good.

“That is the bell for lunch, Miss,” said Parsons; “and master will be in such a way! Shall I go and tell him you have the headache very bad—or what shall I say?”

“Never mind him,” said Kate, faintly; “what does it matter about them and their lunch? Oh, Parsons, I am so very miserable!” sobbed the poor girl. No, she did not mean to betray herself; but still a little sympathy, though not enough to touch the very skirts of her grievance, she must have.

“Are you indeed, Miss?” said Parsons. “I am sure I’m very, very sorry; but if it’s only the headache it can’t last. There, I’ll put a wet handkerchief on your poor head; perhaps that will do it good.”

“It is too deep for anything to do me good,” said Kate; but she suffered the handkerchief to be placed on her forehead, and put up with all those mysterious manipulations of the pillow and the hair and the patient which are orthodox in the circumstances. She lay with her eyes closed and the wet kerchief on her forehead, and her hair spread over the pillow, making her face look all the paler in comparison; her pretty mouth drawn down at the corners, her pale lips and closed eyelids, a very image of youthful misery. Her heart was broken, she thought; and oh, how her head ached!

“Did you get your letters, Miss?” said Parsons softly, drawing out her bright hair, and bending over her sympathetically. But Parsons recoiled in another moment, giving the hair a tug in her consternation, as Kate suddenly stood before her, all blazing and glaring like an avenging angel, with one hand grasping her shoulder and the other clenched menacing in her face.

“My letters!—oh, you wicked miserable woman, it is you who have made me so unhappy! My letters! what do you know of them?” cried Kate.

“Lord, Miss!” said Parsons in dismay, backing before her. And then she began to cry. “I thought as you’d rather I brought ’em up-stairs. You weren’t in the drawing-room, nor nowhere to be seen. I meant it for the best,” cried Parsons, backing to the wall with such a terror of the clenched hand as was quite out of proportion to the powers of that little weapon of offence.

“Give them to me,” cried Kate; “draw up the blinds—make haste and throw this wet thing away. My letters, my letters!—oh, if you only knew what harm you have done! Give them to me——”

She sat down on the sofa under the window, which, after being veiled so carefully, now poured in upon her all the light of the full sunshiny October day. There was a note from Madeline Winton, a notification about millinery from Camelford, something else equally unimportant, and the letter from John, which she ought to have had three hours ago. She paused as she took it up, and turned to Parsons, who was still fluttering about the room in her alarm: “Go away,” said Kate, solemnly; “you can say I have a headache and am lying down; and, please, don’t come near me any more to-day.”

“Let me come and dress you, Miss, as usual. Oh, goodness gracious me! as if I meant any harm.”

“You need not stop to cry,” said Kate, severely; “but go away. You wicked woman! I owe all my trouble to you.”

And then as soon as she was alone she read John’s letter—the letter he had written in his desolate room before he left Camelford. It went to Kate’s heart. She read it and she cried, and she kissed the insensible paper, and her load seemed lifted off her mind. She had been miserable half an hour ago, and now she was happy. It was such an answer to all her questionings as nothing else could have given. She cried, and the colour came back to her cheek and the light to her eyes. “I am not the bank,” she said to herself, with a return of her old levity. “It is not me he means to give up; he must never, never give up me.” And then she kissed the letter again. She had never done such a thing all her life; but she did it now without stopping to think, and she read over the end of it, “yours, and only yours, whatever may happen,” with a gush of warmth and gladness at her heart. “Dear John! poor John! he is so fond of me. Why is he so fond of me?” she said to herself with sweet tears. And then all at once it struck her as with a great chill that there was more than mere fondness in this letter of John’s. “If you should ever want me.” “This may pass over and be to you as if it had never been.” How could that be? Was not he hers and she his as of old?

Just then there came a knock to the door, and two little notes were handed in to her. Another cold thrill went over her as she saw them. One was from her father, and the other from Fred Huntley. “My dear, I am grieved your head aches,” wrote the first, “but I don’t wonder. Keep quite quiet till five, and then come down to the library and make two men very happy. My pretty Kate! Your fond father,

J. C.”

The other was shorter still. “I dare not think or speak, or allow myself to be glad till I see you,” said the other; “but my fate is in your sweet hands.” Such were the communications that were brought to her from the outer world. Kate gazed at them with open mouth and eyes aghast. Then it all came to her mind. She had promised to go to these men and satisfy them, to give Fred Huntley her hand and her promise, and put her seal to it, that her love for John was over for ever. And yet the touch of her mouth was wet upon John’s dear letter, and she hated Fred Huntley as she had never hated any one in her whole life. She sat with the daylight pouring in upon her, and those tokens of fate about her, and despair in her pale and ghastly face. Kate to be ghastly, who had never known what such a word meant! She was getting a wild look like a creature driven to bay. Now and then when she heard the sound of a voice or step in the house—people coming up-stairs or down, somebody passing along the long passage—she gave a shiver, as a hare might shiver at the baying of the hounds. She sat motionless, it seemed to her for hours, in this torpor, and then it was Fred’s voice that roused her. He was down below in front of the house, talking to some one, and she could hear him through the open window. “I am going to the stables to look at the new horses,” he said, “but I shall be back before five o’clock.” Five o’clock! There was a ring in his voice of conscious triumph. He was coming back to take possession of his victim. At that moment, as Kate sat with the trembling of despair upon her, there suddenly rang out upon her ear the sound of the railway bell at the station, which was always considered such a nuisance at Fernwood. The railway itself was a great convenience, only a quarter of a mile from the lodge gates; but the bell and the whistle and the rumbling of the train were very objectionable. When Kate heard it she roused herself with a low cry. She thrust John’s letter into her dress, and tore the others up in little pieces, and then she sat still, with bright awakened eyes for half an hour more. By that time her resolution was formed. She was miserable and impatient of her misery, and every way of escape seemed shut off except this one, and it was something to do which soothed her excitement. It was not with any such thought that she had sent Parsons away. Nothing had been settled in her mind, or even thought of, till Fred Huntley’s voice and the railway bell thus succeeded each other. In circumstances so desperate there is nothing like a sudden inspiration. Four o’clock! the big clock sounded from the stables, and a succession of fairy chimes rang from all the rooms of the house. Four! and no more time to think—for there was not another moment to lose.