"Be not so cruel to me. That you have seen me at all, why need you say?"
"Oh! indeed, miss, do not imagine yourself the only person who values the truth. Dick always asks me, 'Have you seen her?' 'Tis my humour to be truthful, and I am always swayed by my inclination. I shall feel it to be my duty to inform him how indifferent you are. Katherine, put on your bonnet again. Here also are my veil and cloak. No one will perceive that it is you. It is the part of humanity, I assure you. Do so much for a poor soul who is at the grave's mouth."
"My father, I promised him"—
"O child! have six penny worth of common feeling about you. The man is dying for your sake. If he were your enemy, instead of your true lover, you might pity him so much. Do you not wish to see Dick?"
"My life for his life I would give."
"Words, words, my dear. It is not your life he wants. He asks only ten minutes of your time. And if you desire to see him, give yourself the pleasure. There is nothing more silly than to be too wise to be happy."
While thus alternately urging and persuading Katherine, the coach came, the disguise was assumed, and the two drove rapidly to the "King's Arms." Hyde was lying upon a couch which had been drawn close to the window. But in order to secure as much quiet as possible, he had been placed in one of the rooms at the rear of the tavern,—a large, airy room, looking into the beautiful garden which stretched away backward as far as the river. He had been in extremity. He was yet too weak to stand, too weak to endure long the strain of company or books or papers.
He heard his aunt's voice and footfall, and felt, as he always did, a vague pleasure in her advent. Whatever of life came into his chamber of suffering came through her. She brought him daily such intelligences as she thought conducive to his recovery; and it must be acknowledged that it was not always her "humour to be truthful." For Hyde had so craved news of Katherine, that she believed he would die wanting it; and she had therefore fallen, without one conscientious scruple, into the reporter's temptation,—inventing the things which ought to have taken place, and did not. "For, in faith, Nigel," she said to her husband, in excuse, "those who have nothing to tell must tell lies."
Her reports had been ingenious and diversified. "She had seen Katherine at one of the windows,—the very picture of distraction." "She had been told that Katherine was breaking her heart about him;" also, "that Elder