There was something almost approaching to ferocity in his voice as he said this; and yet when Katie timidly looked up she saw that he had turned his back to the room, and that his eyes were full of tears. He had felt that he was loved by this child, but that he was loved from a feeling of uncalled-for gratitude. He could not stop to analyse this, to separate the sweet from the bitter; but he knew that the latter prevailed. It is so little flattering to be loved when such love is the offspring of gratitude. And then when that gratitude is unnecessary, when it has been given in mistake for supposed favours, the acceptance of such love is little better than a cheat!
'That was not all,' said Katie, very decidedly. 'It never shall be all in my mind. If you had not been with us I should now have been drowned, and cold, and dead; and mamma! where would she have been? Oh! Charley, I shall think myself so wicked if I have said anything to vex you.'
Charley did not analyse his feelings, nor did Katie analyse hers. It would have been impossible for her to do so. But could she have done it, and had she done it, she would have found that her gratitude was but the excuse which she made to herself for a passionate love which she could not have excused, even to herself, in any other way.
He said everything he could to reassure her and make her happy, and she soon smiled and laughed again.
'Now, that's what my editor would call a Nemesis,' said Charley.
'Oh, that's a Nemesis, is it?'
'Johnson was cheated into doing my work, and getting me my supper; and then you scolded me, and took away my appetite, so that I couldn't eat it; that's a Nemesis. Johnson is avenged, only, unluckily, he doesn't know it, and wickedness is punished.'
'Well, mind you put it into the Daily Delight. But all the girls are going upstairs; pray let me get out,' and so Katie went upstairs again.
It was then past one. About two hours afterwards, Gertrude, looking for her sister that she might take her home, found her seated on a bench, with her feet tucked under her dress. She was very much fatigued, and she looked to be so; but there was still a bright laughing sparkle in her eye, which showed that her spirits were not even yet weary.
'Well, Katie, have you had enough dancing?'