“It is because I hunger for you—and I have so little of my darling,” said repentant John; “what do I care for all the world if I have not my Kate?”
“But you have your Kate, you foolish boy,” she said; “and what does anything matter when you know that? Do I ever distrust you? When I see you talking to somebody at the very other end of the drawing-room, just when I am wanting you perhaps, I don’t make myself wretched, as you do. I only say to myself, Never mind, he is my John and not hers; and I am quite happy—though I am sure a girl has a great deal more cause to be uneasy than a man.”
And when John had been brought to this point, he would swallow such a speech, and would not allow himself to ask whether it was possible that his absence at the other end of the drawing-room could make Kate wretched. Had he put the question to himself, no doubt Reason would have come in; but why should Reason be allowed to come in to spoil the moments of happiness which came so rarely? He held the hands which were clasped on his arm closer to his side, and gave himself up to the sweetness. And he kept her until ever so long after the dressing-bell had pealed its summons to them under the silent trees. It was the stillest autumn night—a little chill, with a new moon which was just going to set as the dining-room was lighted up for dinner—and now and then a leaf detached itself in the soft darkness, and came down with a noiseless languid whirl in the air, like a signal from the unseen. One of these fell upon Kate’s pretty head as she raised it towards her lover, and he lifted the leaf from her hair and put it into his coat. “I will give you a better flower,” said Kate; “but oh, John, I must go in. I shall never have time to dress. Well——then, just one more turn: and never say I am not the most foolish yielding girl that ever was, doing everything you like to ask—though you scold me and threaten to go away.”
This interview made the evening bearable for John; and it was all the more bearable to him, though it is strange to say so, because Fred Huntley had returned, and sat next him at dinner. He had hated Fred for some days, and was not yet much inclined towards him; but still there was a pleasure in being able to talk freely to some one, and to feel himself, to some extent at least, comprehended, position and all. He was very dry and stiff to Huntley at first, but by degrees the ice broke. “I have never seen you since that night,” said Fred. “My heart has smote me since for the way in which I left you, lying on those door-steps. In that excitement one forgets everything. But you bear considerable marks of it, I see.”
“Nothing to signify,” said John; and Fred gave him a nod, and began to eat his soup with an indifference which was balm to the other’s excited feelings. Finding thus that no gratitude was claimed of him, John grew generous. “I hear it was you who dragged me out; and I have never had a chance of thanking you,” he said.
“Thanking me—what for? I don’t remember dragging any one out,” said Fred. “It was very hot work. I did not rush into the thick of it, like you, to do any good; but I daresay I could give the best description of it. Have they found out how much damage was done?—but I suppose the bank is still going on all the same.”
“Banks cannot stop,” said John, “unless things are going very badly with them indeed.”
“That comes of going in for a special study,” said Huntley; “you always did know all about political economy, didn’t you? No, it wasn’t you, it was Sutherland—never mind; if you have not studied it theoretically, you have practically. I often think if I had gone in for business it would have been better for me on the whole.”
“You have less occasion to say so than most men,” said John.
“Because we are well off?—or because I have got my fellowship, and that sort of thing? I don’t know that it matters much. A man has to work—or else,” said Fred, with a sigh, swallowing something more than that entrée, “he drifts somehow into mischief whether he will or no.”