"Katie," cried poor Philip, "how can you speak to me so, when you know just as well as I do that there's no one in the world I care about but you? You have got everything to do with me. You know, if all the ladies in the world were here, it is you I would choose; you know it is for you I come here; you know I think of nobody else and nothing else." Here Philip, approaching humbly, endeavoured to draw into his own Katie's hand, which lay within reach upon her lap, for by this time the pair had seated themselves, as they usually did, upon a fallen tree which lay conveniently within reach of the road, but sheltered by the brushwood. "Nobody else, and nothing else," said Philip, drawing closer.
"Except the trout," said Katie, with a laugh, "and birds in the season, and the hunting, and the curling, and two or three hundred things, not to speak of Annie Borrodaile."
To this Philip made no reply. He was wounded, and withdrew a little to the other end of the tree. It was a scene which had been played a great many times, and they were both quite familiar with it: but it was always new to them, and always threatened for ten minutes at least a tragical severance, which, however, happily never came.
"That, however, is nothing to me," said Katie; "but when your mother comes and speaks as if—oh, as if I were the dust beneath her feet—as if I were nobody that had ever been heard of before—as if I were a girl that could be bought in the market like a slave in the 'Arabian Nights'——"
"Katie, for goodness sake tell me what she said!"
Katie continued to play with his curiosity for some time longer, until she had worked that and her own indignation into a tragic heat; then, with tears of youthful fury and injured feeling in her eyes, she unfolded her wrongs.
"Mr. Murray was there—he had come to play his piece to mamma—and Mrs. Stormont turned round and looked me straight in the face, and said to him that he must settle in Murkley. 'You'll get a nice house,' she said, 'and a wife; you can pick and choose among the young ladies—oh, yes you can take your choice of them,' and she looked at me—all the time she looked at me! She just offered me—as if she had any business with me!—to that man that is not a man, that can do nothing but fiddle on the piano," cried Katie, transported by her wrongs and her indignation. She even cried a little—hot tears, out of pity for herself and the sense of injury which swelled all her youthful veins.
Philip on his side was greatly relieved to find that it was no worse. What he had feared was that his mother had interfered definitely in his own affairs. His mind was greatly eased when he heard the extent of her transgressions. He ventured upon a short laugh under his moustache.
"That was so like my mother," he said.
"It may have been very like your mother, Mr. Stormont," cried Katie, "but if you think that I am going to put up with it—and mamma too!"