Kate Coventry: An Autobiography

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

"M. L."

I threw the letter on the floor, and stamped upon it with my feet. And was this the end of all? To have brooded and pined, and made myself miserable and well-nigh broken my heart day by day for a man that was to prove so utterly unworthy as this! To have been thrown over for a Lady Scapegrace! or, worse still, to have allowed even to myself that I cared for one who was ready and willing to be sold to a Miss Molasses.

"Too degrading!" I thought. "No, I'll never care for him again; the dream is over. What a fool I've been! And yet—why did he send his horses down to Muddlebury? Why did he serenade me that night from the Park? Why is he not now with his dear Lady Scapegrace at Scamperly, where I see by the Morning Post Sir Guy is 'entertaining a party of fashionables during the frost'? No! I will not give him up quite yet."

On reading her letter over again, which I did many times during the day, I found a ray of comfort in my voluble correspondent's own opinion that Frank did not himself care a pin for either of the ladies, to both of whom the world gave him so unhesitatingly. Well, that was something, at any rate. As for his wildness and his debts, and his recklessness and many escapades, I liked him none the worse for these—what woman ever did? I thought it all over during the whole day, and by the time that I opened my window for my usual lookout into the night before going to bed, I am afraid I felt more inclined than ever to forgive him all that had gone before, and more determined to find some means of forwarding him the answer I had written to his note, and which I had been so many times on the point of burning during the day.

What a bitter cold night it was!—yet the keen north wind felt pleasant and refreshing on my fevered forehead. There had been a sprinkling of snow too since sunset, and the open surface of the Park was completely whitened over—how cheerless and desolate it looked! I hadn't the heart to stay very long at the window; it reminded me too much of the pleasant evenings one short week ago. I felt weary and desponding, and drowsy with uncertainty and unhappiness, so I was in the act of shutting down the window, when I saw a dark figure moving rapidly across the snow in the direction of the house. Not for an instant did I mistake it for a deer, or a gamekeeper, or a poacher, or a housebreaker. From the moment I set eyes on it, something told me it must be Frank Lovell; and though I shrunk back that he might not see me, I watched him with painful anxiety and a beating heart. He seemed to know his way quite well. He came straight to the moat, felt his way cautiously for a step or two, and finding the ice would bear him, crossed at once, and took up a position under my window, not twenty feet from where I was standing.

He must have seen my shadow across the candle-light, for he whispered my name.

"Miss Coventry—Kate! Only one word." What could I do? Poor fellow! he had walked all that distance in the cold and the snow only for one word—and this was the man I had been doubting and misjudging all day! Why, of course, though I know it was very wrong and very improper and all that, of course I spoke to him, and listened to what he had to say, and carried on a long conversation, the effect of which was somewhat ludicrous, in consequence of the distance between the parties, question and answer requiring to be shouted, as it were, in a whisper. The night too was clouding over, more snow was falling, and it was getting so dark I could not see Frank, even at the distance of twelve or fourteen feet, and it could not have been much more between my bedroom window and the ground.

"Did you get my note?" said he with sundry complimentary expressions.

"Here's the answer," was my practical reply, as I dropped my own missive into the darkness.

I know he caught it, because—because—I heard him kiss it. At that moment I was aware of a step in the passage, a hand on my door. Down went my window in a twinkling, out went my candles—the wick of the second one would keep glimmering like a light far off at sea—and in came Aunt Horsingham, clad in flannel attire, with a wondrous head-dress, the like of which I have never beheld before or since, just as I popped into bed, and buried myself beneath the clothes as if I had been asleep for hours.