Kate was very glad to see him, the sense of kinship was strong within her, and as she was both too much preoccupied and too simple to have any consciousness with regard to him, she was openly glad that he took her in to dinner, and was soon talking freely to him about his home and his sisters.
It struck Emberance, as she sat opposite, that there was a little more than cousinly eagerness in Walter’s manner, the dawning of an interest in the bright friendly open-faced girl, which might grow and deepen.
In truth, Walter was aware of liking Kate exceedingly, and was thinking that she had grown prettier and more interesting since his last visit, with feeling and expression that made her brown eyes less like a bird’s and more like a woman’s. He speculated too upon the blush with which she answered some question about Major Clare’s absence, and decided within himself that that blasé man of the world was entirely unworthy of a fresh-hearted innocent girl like Katharine. He remembered her confidence down on the rocks, and felt that he would like much to obtain a renewal of it. As he was not now staying with the Deanes his movements were free; and on Sunday he came to Church at Kingsworth, observing with pleasure that Major Clare’s place in the vicarage pew was still vacant. As he had walked four or five miles, it occurred even to Mrs Kingsworth to ask him to lunch, and while in the brightness of a mild winter Sunday they walked home across the park, Kate too remembered her childish impulse of confiding her fears to her “relation,” and felt how much more difficult words would be now on a subject that had grown so extremely serious. Yet she should like to know how the situation would strike Walter. The Canon did not, she thought, write freely to her; she could not, except under great stress of feeling, discuss the matter with Emberance, and of her mother’s stern, clear view she had an instinctive dread.
Emberance had promised to take Miss Clare’s class at the Sunday school in the afternoon—a piece of usefulness forbidden to Kate, and when she was gone silence and stiffness fell on the little party. Natural disposition and the long habit of seclusion alike made entertaining a stranger almost intolerable to Mrs Kingsworth, and all her rigid views of chaperonage did not prevent her from going to dress for afternoon service, some ten minutes before there was any occasion to do so.
Both Kate and Walter were full of the same thought, and they had not been alone five minutes before something was said of the rocks, where they met before, then a conscious silence, then an impetuous speech from Kate.
“I know all about it now!”
“Then,” said Walter, “you see that I could not answer your questions. I have been afraid so often since that you thought me cold and unfeeling.”
“No; I didn’t think about that at all. But I was puzzled and ashamed.”
“No—no,” he said eagerly, “you must not feel as if you were guilty. What chance have you had, a child—and kept ignorant of it all—of feeling the wrong or doing anything to rectify it?”
“Rectify it? How could I? It is all done.”