"Because I like things done decently and in order. You are not ordained, and there are plenty of churches and chapels, God knows, for people to go to, if they would wash their faces and be decent. Now I can't stay here any longer, so good-by for the present." She took up a little basket containing an old pair of gloves, large scissors, and a ball of twine, and walked briskly away to attend to the plants in her diminutive conservatory.
De Burgh did not prolong his absence; he returned to Castleford while Katherine was still in attendance on the little invalid; but he found his stay neither pleasant nor profitable. Katherine was far too much occupied nursing her nephew to give any time or attention to her impatient admirer.
"Miss Liddell is a peculiar specimen of her sex," he growled, in his usual candid and unaffected manner, as he and Colonel Ormonde sat alone over their wine. "She never leaves those brats. She must know that it's not every girl I should take the trouble of teaching, and yet she throws over each appointment I make. Does she intend to adopt your wife's boys? Adopted sons are an appendage no man would like to accept with a bride, be she ever so well endowed."
"Oh, she will forget them as soon as she falls in love! You must carry on the siege more vigorously."
"How the deuce are you to do it when you never get within hail of the fortress? There is something peculiar about Katherine Liddell I can't quite make out. If she were a commonplace woman, angular, squinting, or generally plain, I could go in and win and collar the cash without hesitation, but somehow or other I can't go into the affair in this spirit. I want the woman as well as the money."
"Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't have both. Your faintness of heart never lost you any fair lady, I am sure, Jack."
"Perhaps not." And he smoked meditatively for a minute or two.
"Then you will not leave us to-morrow?" said Ormonde.
"When does she go up to town?" asked De Burgh.
"On Monday, I believe."