But whether the result of this awaking would have told for anything in Katherine’s life had it not been for another incident which happened shortly after, it would be impossible to say. She forgot the impression of that sudden stroke of nature, and when she went back to her father, who was a little excited by his first outing, there revived again so strong an impression of the need there was of the doctor and his care, and the importance of his position in the house as a sort of deus ex machinÂ, always ready to be appealed to and to perform miracles at pleasure, that the former state of acquiescence in whatever he might demand as the price of his services, came back strongly to her mind, and the possibility was that there would have been no hesitation on her part, though no enthusiasm, had he seized the opportunity during one of the days of that week, and put his fate to the touch. But a number of small incidents supervened; and there is a kind of luxury in delay in these circumstances which gains upon a man, the pleasure of the unacknowledged, the delightful sense of feeling that he is sure of a favourable response, without all the responsibilities which a favourable response immediately brings into being. The moment that he asked and Katherine consented, there would be the father to face, and all the practical difficulties of the position to be met. He would have to take “the bull by the horns.” This is a very different thing from those preliminaries, exciting but delightful, which form the first step. To declare your sentiments to the girl you love, to receive that assent and answering confession of which you are almost sure—only so much uncertainty in it as makes the moment thrilling with an alarm and timidity which is more sweet than confidence. That is one thing; but what follows is quite another; the doctor a little “funked,” as he himself said, that next important step. There was no telling what might come out of that old demon of a father. Sometimes Dr. Burnet thought that he was being encouraged, that he had become so necessary to Mr. Tredgold that the idea of securing his attendance would be jumped at by the old man; and sometimes he thought otherwise. He was, in fact, though a brave man, frightened of the inevitable second step. And therefore he let the matter linger, finding much delight in the happy unconsciousness that he was risking nothing, that she understood him and all his motives, and that his reward was certain, when he did make up his mind to ask for it at last.

Things were in this condition when one day, encouraged by her father’s improvement, Katherine went to town, as everybody in the country is bound to do, to go through that process which is popularly known as “shopping.” In previous years Stella’s enterprise and activity had provided clothes for every season as much in advance as fashion permitted, so that there never was any sudden necessity. But Katherine had never been energetic in these ways, and the result was that the moment arrived, taking her a little unawares, in which even Katherine was forced to see that she had nothing to wear. She went to town, accordingly, one morning in the beginning of June, attended by the maid who was no more than an elderly promoted upper housemaid, who had succeeded Stevens. Katherine had not felt herself equal to a second Stevens entirely for herself, indeed, she had been so well trained by Stella, who always had need of the services of everybody about her, that she was very well able to dispense with a personal attendant altogether. But it was an admirable and honourable retirement for Hannah to give up the more active work of the household and to become Miss Katherine’s maid, and her conscientious efforts to fulfil the duties of her new position were entertaining at least. A more perfect guardian, if any guardian had been necessary, of all the decorums could not have been than was this highly respectable person who accompanied her young mistress to London with a sense of having a great responsibility upon her shoulders. As a matter of fact, no guardian being in the least necessary, it was Katherine who took care of her, which came to exactly the same thing and answered all purposes.

The train was on this occasion rather full, and the young lady and her maid were put into a compartment in which were already two passengers, a lady and gentleman, at the other extremity of the carriage, to all appearance together. But it soon turned out that they were not together. The lady got out at one of the little stations at which they stopped, and then, with a little hesitation, the gentleman rose and came over to the side on which Katherine was. “It is long since we have met,” he said in a voice which had a thrill in it, noticeable even to Hannah, who instinctively retired a little, leaving the place opposite Katherine at his disposition (a thing, I need not remark, which was quite improper, and ought not to have been done. Hannah could not for a long time forgive herself, when she thought it over, but for the moment she was dominated by the voice). “I have not seen you,” he repeated, with a little faltering, “for years. Is it permitted to say a word to you, Miss Tredgold?”

The expression of his eyes was not a thing to be described. It startled Katherine all the more that she had of late been exposed to glances having a similar meaning, yet not of that kind. She looked at him almost with a gasp. “Mr. Stanford! I thought you were in India?”

“So I was,” he said, “and so I am going to be in a few months more. What a curious unexpected happi—I mean occurrence—that I should have met you—quite by accident.”

“Oh yes, quite by accident,” she said.

“I have been in the island,” he said, “and near Sliplin for a day or two, where it would have been natural to see you, and then when I was coming away in desp—without doing so, what a chance that of all places in the world you should have been put into this carriage.”

He seemed so astonished at this that it was very difficult to get over it. Katherine took it with much more composure, and yet her heart had begun to beat at the first sound of his voice.

He asked her a great many questions about her father, about Stella; even, timidly, about herself, though it soon became apparent that this was not from any need of information. He had heard about Stella’s marriage, “down there,” with a vague indication of the point at which their journey began; and that Mr. Tredgold had been ill, and that—— But he did not end that sentence. It was easily to be perceived that he had acquired the knowledge somewhere that Katherine was still—Katherine—and took a great satisfaction in the fact. And then he began to tell her about himself. He had done very well, better than could have been expected. He had now a very good appointment, and his chief was very kind to him. “There are no fortunes to be made now in India—or, at least, not such as we used to hear were once made. The life is different altogether. It is not a long martyrdom and lakhs of rupees, but a very passable existence and frequent holidays home. Better that, I think.”

“Surely much better,” said Katherine.

“I think so. And then there are the hills—Simla, and so forth, which never were thought of in my father’s time. They had to make up their minds and put up with everything. We have many alleviations—the ladies have especially,” he added, with a look that said a great deal more. Why should he add by his looks so much importance to that fact? And how was it that Katherine, knowing nothing of the life in India, took up his meaning in the twinkling of an eye?

“But the ladies,” she said, “don’t desert the plains where their—their husbands are, I hope, to find safety for themselves on the hills?”

“I did not mean that,” he said, with a flush of colour all over his brown face (Katherine compared it, in spite of herself, to Dr. Burnet’s recent blush, with conclusions not favourable to the latter). “I mean that it is such a comfort to men to think that—what is most precious to them in the world—may be placed in safety at any critical moment.”

“I wonder if that is Charlie Somers’ feeling,” Katharine said with an involuntary laugh. It was not that she meant to laugh at Charlie Somers; it was rather the irrestrainable expression of a lightening and rising of her own heart.

“No doubt every man must,” James Stanford said.

And they went on talking, he telling her many things which she did not fully understand or even receive into her mind at all, her chief consciousness being that this man—her first love—was the only one who had felt what a true lover should, the only one to whom her heart made any response. She did not even feel this during the course of that too rapid journey. She felt only an exhilaration, a softening and expansion of her whole being. She could not meet his eyes as she met Dr. Burnet’s; they dazzled her; she could not tell why. Her heart beat, running on with a tremulous accompaniment to those words of his, half of which her intelligence did not master at the time, but which came to her after by degrees. He told her that he was soon going back to India, and that he would like to go and see Stella, to let her know by an independent testimony how her sister was. Might he write and give her his report? Might he come—this was said hurriedly as the train dashed into the precincts of London, and the end of the interview approached—to Sliplin again one day before he left on the chance of perhaps seeing her—to inquire for Mr. Tredgold—to take anything she might wish to send to Lady Somers? Katherine felt the flush on her own face to be overwhelming. Ah, how different from that half-angry confused colour which she had been conscious of when the Rector offered his congratulations!

“Oh no,” she said with a little shake of her head, and a sound of pathos in her voice of which she was quite conscious; “my father is ill; he is better now, but his condition is serious. I am very—sorry—I am distressed—to say so—but he must not be disturbed, he must not. I have escaped for a little to-day. I—had to come. But at home I am altogether taken up by papa. I cannot let you—lose your time—take the trouble—of coming for nothing. Oh, excuse me—I cannot——” Katherine said.

And he made no reply, he looked at her, saying a thousand things with his eyes. And then there came the jar of the arrival. He handed her out, he found a cab for her, performing all the little services that were necessary, and then he held her hand a moment while he said goodbye.

“May I come and see you off? May I be here when you come back?”

“Oh, no, no!” Katherine said, she did not know why. “I don’t know when we go back; it perhaps might not be till to-morrow—it might not be till—that is, no, you must not come, Mr. Stanford—I—cannot help it,” she said.

Still he held her hand a moment. “It must still be hope then, nothing but hope,” he said.

She drove away through London, leaving him, seeing his face wherever she looked. Ah, that was what the others had wanted to look like but had not been able—that was—all that one wanted in this world; not the Tredgold money, nor the fortune of the great City young man, nor the Rector’s dignity, nor Dr. Burnet’s kindness—nothing but that, it did not matter by what accompanied. What a small matter to be poor, to go away to the end of the earth, to be burned by the sun and wasted by the heat, to endure anything, so long as you had that. She trembled and was incoherent when she tried to speak. She forgot where to tell the cabman to go, and said strange things to Hannah, not knowing what she said. Her heart beat and beat, as if it was the only organ she possessed, as if she were nothing but one pulse, thumping, thumping with a delicious idiocy, caring for nothing, and thinking of nothing. Thinking of nothing, though rays and films of thought flew along in the air and made themselves visible to her for a moment. Perhaps she should never see him again; she had nothing to do with him, there was no link between them; and yet, so to speak, there was nothing else but him in the world. She saw the tall tower of the Parliament in a mist that somehow encircled James Stanford’s face, and broad Whitehall was full of that vapour in which any distinctions of other feature, of everything round about her, was lost.

How curious an effect to be produced upon anyone so reasonable, so sensible as Katherine! After a long time, she did not know how long, she was recalled to common day by her arrival at the dressmaker’s where she had to get out and move and speak, all of which she seemed to do in a dream. And then the day turned round and she had to think of her journey back again. Why did she tell him not to come? It would have harmed nobody if he had come. Her father had not forbidden her to see him, and even had he forbidden her, a girl who was of age, who was nearly twenty-four, who had after all a life of her own to think of, should she have refrained from seeing him on that account? All her foundations were shaken, not so much by feeling of her own as by the sight and certainty of his feeling. She would not desert her father, never, never run away from him like Stella. But at least she might have permitted herself to see James Stanford again. She said to herself, “I may never marry him; but now I shall marry nobody else.” And why had she not let him come, why might they not at least have understood each other? The influence of this thought was that Katherine did not linger for the afternoon train, to which Stanford after all did go, on the chance of seeing her, of perhaps travelling with her again, but hurried off by the very first, sadly disappointing poor Hannah, who had looked forward to the glory of lunching with her young mistress in some fine pastrycook’s as Stevens had often described. Far from this, Hannah was compelled to snatch a bun at the station, in the hurry Miss Katherine was in; and why should she have hurried? There was no reason in the world. To be in London, and yet not in London, to see nothing, not even the interior of Verey’s, went to Hannah’s heart. Nor was Katherine’s much more calm when she began to perceive that her very impetuosity had probably been the reason why she did not see him again; for who could suppose that she who had spoken of perhaps not going till to-morrow, should have fled back again in an hour, by a slow train in which nobody who could help it ever went?

By that strange luck which so often seems to regulate human affairs, Dr. Burnet chose this evening of all others for the explanation of his sentiments. He paid Mr. Tredgold an evening visit, and found him very well; and then he went out to join Katherine, whom he saw walking on the path that edged the cliff. It was a beautiful June evening, serene and sweet, still light with the lingering light of day, though the moon was already high in the sky. There was no reason any longer why Dr. Burnet should restrain his feelings. His patient was well; there was no longer any indecorum, anything inappropriate, in speaking to Katherine of what she must well know was nearest to his heart. He, too, had been conscious of the movement in the air—the magnetic communication from him to her on the day of Mr. Tredgold’s first outing, when they had met the Rector, and he had congratulated them. To Katherine it had seemed almost as if in some way unknown to herself everything had been settled between them, but Dr. Burnet knew different. He knew that nothing had been settled, that no words nor pledge had passed between them; but he had little doubt what the issue would be. He felt that he had the matter in his own hands, that he had only to speak and she to reply. It was a foregone conclusion, nothing wanting but the hand and seal.

Katherine had scarcely got beyond the condition of dreaming in which she had spent the afternoon. She was a little impatient when she saw him approaching. She did not want her thoughts to be disturbed. Her thoughts were more delightful to her than anything else at this moment, and she half resented the appearance of the doctor, whom her mind had forsaken as if he had never been. The dreaming state in which she was, the preoccupation with one individual interest is a cruel condition of mind. At another moment she would have read Dr. Burnet’s meaning in his eyes, and would have been prepared at least for what was coming—she who knew so well what was coming, who had but a few days ago acquiesced in what seemed to be fate. But now, when he began to speak, Katherine was thunderstruck. A sort of rage sprang up in her heart. She endeavoured to stop him, to interrupt the words on his lips, which was not only cruel but disrespectful to a man who was offering her his best, who was laying himself, with a warmth which he had scarcely known to be in him, at her feet. He was surprised at his own ardour, at the fire with which he made his declaration, and so absorbed in that that he did not for the first moment see how with broken exclamations and lifted hands she was keeping him off.

“Oh, don’t, doctor! Oh, don’t say so, don’t say so!” were the strange words that caught his ear at last; and then he shook himself up, so to speak, and saw her standing beside him in the gathering dimness of the twilight, her face not shining with any sweetness of assent, but half convulsed with pain and shame, her hands held up in entreaty, her lips giving forth these words, “Oh, don’t say so!”

It was his turn to be struck dumb. He drew up before her with a sudden pause of consternation.

“What?” he cried—“what?” not believing his ears.

And thus they stood for a moment speechless, both of them. She had stopped him in the middle of his love tale, which he had told better and with more passion than he was himself sensible of. She had stopped him, and now she did not seem to have another word to say.

“It is my anxiety which is getting too much for me,” he said. “You didn’t say that, Katherine—not that? You did not mean to interrupt me—to stop me? No. It is only that I am too much in earnest—that I am frightening myself——”

“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” she cried, instinctively putting her hands together. “It is I who am to blame. Oh, do not be angry with me. Let us part friends. Don’t—don’t say that any more!”

“Say what?—that I love you, that I want you to be my wife? Katherine, I have a right to say it! You have known for a long time that I was going to say it. I have been silent because of—for delicacy, for love’s sake; but you have known. I know that you have known!” he cried almost violently, though in a low voice.

She had appealed to him like a frightened girl; now she had to collect her forces as a woman, with her dignity to maintain. “I will not contradict you,” she said. “I cannot; it is true. I can only ask you to forgive me. How could I stop you while you had not spoken? Oh no, I will not take that excuse. If it had been last night it might have been otherwise, but to-day I know better. I cannot—it is impossible! Don’t—oh don’t let us say any more.”

“There is a great deal more to be said!” he cried. “Impossible! How is it impossible? Last night it would have been possible, but to-day—— You are playing with me, Katherine! Why should it be impossible to-day?”

“Not from anything in you, Dr. Burnet,” she said; “from something in myself.”

“From what in yourself? Katherine, I tell you you are playing with me! I deserve better at your hands.”

“You deserve—everything!” she cried, “and I—I deserve nothing but that you should scorn me. But it is not my fault. I have found out. I have had a long time to think; I have seen things in a new light. Oh, accept what I say! It is impossible—impossible!”

“Yet it was possible yesterday, and it may be possible to-morrow?”

“No, never again!” she said.

“Do you know,” said the doctor stonily, “that you have led me on, that you have given me encouragement, that you have given me almost a certainty?—and now to cast me off, without sense, without reason——”

The man’s lip quivered under the sting of this disappointment and mortification. He began not to know what he was saying.

“Let us not say any more—oh, let us not say any more! That was unkind that you said. I could give you no certainty, for I had none; and to-day—I know that it is impossible! Dr. Burnet, I cannot say any more.”

“But, Miss Tredgold,” he cried in his rage, “there is a great deal more to be said! I have a right to an explanation! I have a right to—— Good heavens, do you mean that nothing is to come of it after all?” he cried.