This strange little incident, which at the moment it was occurring seemed to be perfectly natural, but as soon as that moment was over became inexplicable, dropped into Kate’s life as a stone drops into water. It made a curious commotion and a bustle for the moment, and stirred faintly for a little while afterwards, and then disappeared, and was thought of no more.

Mr. Sugden would not stay, he would not even eat in the house. He had come down from town to the station six miles off, the nearest station for Langton-Courtenay, and there he meant to return again as soon as he had his information. Kate had been much troubled as to how she, in her unprotected condition, was to ask him to stay; but when she found out he would not stay, an uncomfortable sensation as of want of hospitality came over her. But when he was actually gone, and Minnie Hardwick called back, somehow the entire incident appeared like a dream, and it seemed impossible that anything important had happened. Minnie was not curious; business was to her a sacred word, which covered all difficulties. The Curate was not old, as she had supposed; but otherwise being a friend of Mrs. Anderson’s, and involved in her affairs, his sudden visit seemed perfectly natural. Just so men would come down from town, and be shut up with her father for an hour or two, and then disappear; and Kate as a great lady, as an heiress and independent person, no doubt must have the same kind of visitors.

Kate, however, thought a great deal of it that night—could not sleep, indeed, for thinking of it; but less the next morning, and still less the day after, till at length the tranquillity settled back into its old stillness. Mr. Sugden had done her good, so far that he had roused her to consciousness of a hearty sentiment in herself, independent of anything from without—the natural affection which was her own independent possession, and not a reflection of other people’s love. What though they did not love her even? she loved them; and as soon as she became conscious of this, she was saved from the mental harm that might have happened to her. It gave Kate pain when day after day passed on, and no word came from those who had departed from her so suddenly. But then she was young, and had been brought up in the persuasion that everything was likely to turn out right at the end, and that permanent unhappiness was a very rare thing. She was not alarmed about the safety of those who had deserted her; they were two, nay, three people together; they were used to taking care of themselves; so far as she knew, they had money enough and all that was required. And then her own life was so strange; it occupied her almost like a fairy-life. She thought she had never heard of any one so forlorn and solitary. The singularity of her position did her good. She was half proud, half amused by it; she smiled when her visitors would remark upon her singular loneliness—‘Yes, it seems strange to you, I suppose,’ she said; but I don’t mind it.’ It was a small compensation, but still it was a kind of compensation, indemnifying her for some at least of her trouble. The Andersons had disappeared into the great darkness of the world; but some day they would turn up again and come back to her and make explanations. And although she had been impressed by Mr. Sugden’s visit, she was not actually anxious about the future of her aunt and cousin; some time or other things naturally would put themselves right.

This, however, did not prevent the feeling of her loneliness from being terrible to her—insupportable; but it removed all complications from her feelings, and made them simple. And thus she lived on for months together, as if in a dream, always assuring Mr. Courtenay that she did very well, that she wanted nothing, getting a little society in the Rectory with the Hardwicks, and with some of her county neighbours who had called upon her. Minnie got used to the carriage, and to making expeditions into Westerton, the nearest town, and liked it. And strangely and stilly as ever ChÂtelaine lived in an old castle, in such a strange maiden seclusion lived Kate.

Where had the others gone? She ascertained before long that they were not at Shanklin—the Cottage was still let to ‘very nice people,’ about whom Lucy Eldridge wrote very enthusiastic letters to her cousin—letters which Kate would sometimes draw her innocent moral from, not without a little faint pain, which surprised her in the midst of all graver troubles. She pointed out to Minnie how Lucy Eldridge had rejected the very idea of being friendly with the new comers, much less admitting them to a share in the place Kate held in her heart. ‘Whereas now you see I am forgotten altogether,’ Kate said, with a conscious melancholy that was not disagreeable to her. Minnie protested that with her such a thing could never happen—it was impossible; and Kate smiled sadly, and shook her head in her superior knowledge. She took Minnie into her intimacy with a sense of condescension. But the friendship did her good. And Mrs. Hardwick was very kind to her. They were all anxious to ‘be of use’ to the heiress, to help her through her melancholy hours.

When Bertie came down for his next flying visit, she manoeuvred so that she succeeded in avoiding him, though he showed no desire this time to avoid her. But, Kate said to herself, this was something that she could not bear. She could not see him as if he were an indifferent stranger, when she knew well that he could reveal to her everything she wanted to know, and set the tangle right at last. He knew where they were without doubt—he knew everything. She could not meet him calmly, and shake hands with him, and pretend she did not remember the past. She was offended with him, both for their sake and her own—for Ombra’s sake, because of the secret; and for her own, because of certain little words and looks which were an insult to her from Ombra’s lover. No, she could not see him. She had a bad headache when he came with his mother to call; she was not able to go out when she was asked to the Rectory. She saw him only at church, and did nothing but bow when he hurried to speak to her in the churchyard. No, that she would not put up with. There was even a certain contempt mingled with her soreness. Mrs. Anderson had put all the blame upon him—the ‘other party to the secret;’ while he, poor creature, would not even take the responsibility upon his own shoulders bravely, but blamed Ombra. Well! well! Kate resolved that she would keep her solitude unbroken, that she would allow no intrusion upon her of all the old agitations that once had made her unhappy. She would not consent to allow herself to be made unhappy any longer, or even to think of those who had given her so much pain.

Unfortunately, however, after she had made this good resolution, she thought of nothing else, and puzzled herself over the whole business, and especially Bertie’s share in it, night and day. He would suddenly start up into her mind when she was thinking of something else, with a glow over his face, and anxious gleam in his eyes, as she had seen him at the church door. Perhaps, then, though so late, he had meant to explain. Perhaps he intended to lay before her what excuses there might be—to tell her how one thing followed another, how they had been led into clandestine ways.

Kate would make out an entire narrative to herself and then would stop short suddenly, and ask herself what she meant by it? It was not for her to explain for them, but for them to explain to her. But she did not want to think badly of them. Even when her wounds had been deepest, she did not wish to think unkindly; and it would have given her a kind of forlorn pleasure to be able to find out their excuses beforehand. This occupied her many an hour when she sat alone in the stillness, to which she gradually became accustomed. After awhile her own reflection in the glass no longer struck her as looking like a ghost or a thief; she grew used to it. And then the way in which she threw herself into the parish did one good to see. Minnie Hardwick felt that Kate’s activity and Kate’s beneficence took away her breath. She filled the cottages with what Mrs. Hardwick felt to be luxuries, and disapproved of. She rushed into Westerton continually, to buy things for the old women. One had an easy-chair, another a carpet, another curtains to keep out the wind from the draughty cottage room.

‘My dear, you will spoil the people; these luxuries are quite out of their reach. We ought not to demoralize them,’ said the clergywoman, thinking of the awful consequences, and of the expectations and discontents that would follow.

‘If old Widow Morgan belonged to me—if she was my grandmother, for instance,’ said revolutionary Kate, ‘would there be anything in the world too good for her? We should hunt the draughts out of every corner, and pad everything with velvet. And I suppose an old woman of eighty in a cottage feels it just as much.’

Mrs. Hardwick was silenced, but not convinced; she was, indeed, shocked beyond measure at the idea of Widow Morgan requiring as many comforts as Kate’s grandmother. ‘The girl has no discrimination whatever; she does not see the difference; it is of no use trying to explain to her,’ she said, with a troubled countenance. But, except these little encounters, there was no real disagreement between them. Bertie Hardwick’s family, indeed, took an anxious interest in Kate. They were not worldly-minded people, but they could not forget that their son had been thrown a great deal into the society of a great heiress, both in the Isle of Wight and in Italy. The knowledge that he was in Kate’s vicinity had indeed made them much more tolerant, though nobody said so, of his wanderings. They had not the heart, they said, to separate him from his cousin, to whom he was so much attached; but behind this there was perhaps lurking another reason. Not that they would ever have forced their son’s affections, or advised, under any circumstances, a mercenary marriage; but only, all other things being so suitable—Mrs. Hardwick, who liked to manage everybody, and did it very well, on the whole, took Kate into her hands with a glow of satisfaction. She would have liked to form her and mould her, and make her all that a woman in her important position ought to be; and, of course, no one could tell what might happen in the future. It was well to be prepared for all.

Mr. Courtenay, for his part, though not quite so happy about his niece, and troubled by disagreeable pricks of conscience in respect to her, made all right by promises. He would come in a week or two—as soon as his cold was better—when he had got rid of the threatening of the gout, which rather frightened his doctor. Finally, he promised without doubt that he would come in the Easter recess, and make everything comfortable. But in the Easter recess it became absolutely necessary for him, for important private affairs, to go down to the Duke of Dorchester’s marine palace, where there were some people going whom it was absolutely essential that he should meet. And thus it came to pass that Kate spent her twentieth birthday all alone at Langton-Courtenay. Nobody knew or remembered that it was her birthday. There was not so much as an old servant about the place to think of it. Maryanne, to be sure, might have remembered, but did not until next morning, when she broke forth with, ‘La, Miss Kate!’ into good wishes and regrets, which Kate, with a flushed face and sore heart, put a stop to at once. No, no one knew. It is a hard thing, even when one is old, to feel that such domestic anniversaries have fallen into oblivion, and no one cares any longer for the milestones of our life; but when one is young—!

Kate went about all day long with this secret bursting in her heart. She would not tell it for pride, though, if she had, all the Hardwick family, at least, would have been ready enough with kisses and congratulations. She carried it about with her like a pain that she was hiding. ‘It is my birthday,’ she said to herself, when she paused before the big glass, and looked at her own solitary figure, and tried to make a little forlorn fun of herself; ‘good morning, Kate, I will give you a present. It will be the only one you will get to-day,’ she said, laughing, and nodding at her representative in the glass, whose eyes were rather red; ‘but I will not wish you many returns, for I am sure you don’t want them. Oh! you poor, poor girl!’ she cried, after a moment—‘I am so sorry for you! I don’t think there is anyone so solitary in all the world.’ And then Kate and her image both sat down upon the floor and cried.

But in the afternoon she went to Westerton, with Minnie Hardwick all unconscious beside her in the carriage, and bought herself the present she had promised. It was a tiny little cross, with the date upon it, which Minnie marvelled at much, wondering if it was to herself that this memento was to be presented. Kate had a strong inclination to place the words ‘Infelicissimo giorno’ over the date, but stopped, feeling that it might look romantic; but it was the unhappiest day to her—the worst, she thought, she had ever yet had to bear.

When she came home, however, a letter was put into her hands. It was from Mrs. Anderson at last.