Did he cast a glance at the head of the table as he spoke, where Kate sat radiant, dispensing her smiles on either hand? It was difficult to imagine why he did so, and yet so it seemed. John looked at her too, and for the moment his heart failed him. Could he say, as she herself had suggested, “After all, she is my Kate and no one’s else,” as she sat there in all her splendour? What could he give her that would bear comparison? Of all the men at her father’s table, he was the most humble. At that moment he caught Kate’s eye, and she gave him the most imperceptible little nod, the brightest momentary glance. She acknowledged him when even his own faith failed him. His heart came bounding up again to his breast, and throbbed and knocked against it, making itself all but audible in a kind of shout of triumph. Then he turned half round to his companion, with heightened colour, and an animation of manner which was quite unusual to him. He found Huntley’s eyes fixed upon his face, looking at him with grave, wondering, almost sympathetic interest. Of course Fred’s countenance changed as soon as he found that it was perceived, and sank into the ordinary expressionless look of good society. He was the spectator looking on at this drama, and felt himself so much better qualified to judge than either of those more closely concerned.
“How do you like Fernwood?” Huntley began, with some precipitation. “It is rather too full to be pleasant while you are half an invalid, isn’t it? Does your arm give you much pain?”
“It is very full,” said John, “and one is very much alone among a crowd of people whom one does not know.”
“You will soon get to know them,” said Fred, consolingly; “people are very easy to get on with nowadays on the whole.”
“I am going away on Thursday,” said John.
“What! the day after to-morrow? before your arm is better, or—anything different? Do you know, Mitford, I think you stand a good deal in your own light.”
“That may be,” John said, hotly, “but there are some personal matters of which one can only judge for one’s self.”
Fred made no answer to this; he shrugged his shoulders a little as who should say, It is no business of mine, and began to talk of politics and the member for Camelford, about whose election there were great searchings of heart in the borough and its neighbourhood. An inquiry was going on in the town, and disclosures were being made which excited the district. The two young men turned their thoughts, or at least their conversation, to that subject, and seemed to forget everything else; but whether the election committee took any very strong hold upon them, or if they were really much interested about the doings of the Man in the Moon, it would be hard to say.
The drawing-room was very bright and very gay that evening—like a scene in a play, John was tempted to think. There was a great deal of music, and he sat in his corner and looked and saw everything, and would have been amused had he felt no special interest in it. Kate was in the very centre of it all, guiding and directing, as it was natural she should be. The spectator in the corner watched her by the piano, now taking a part, now accompanying, now throwing herself back into her chair with an air of relief when something elaborate had been set agoing, and whispering and smiling behind her fan to some favoured being, though never to himself. At one moment his vague pain in watching her rose to a positive pang. It was when Fred Huntley was the person with whom she talked. He was stooping down over her, leaning on the back of a chair, and Kate’s face was raised to him and half screened with her fan. Their talk looked very confidential, very animated and friendly; and it seemed to John (but that must have been a mistake) that she gave him just the tips of her fingers as she dismissed him. Fred rose from the chair on which he had been half kneeling with a little movement of his head, which Kate reciprocated, and went off upon a meandering passage round the room. She had given him some commission, John felt—to him, and not to me, he said bitterly in his heart, and then tried to comfort himself, not very successfully, with the words she had taught him, “After all, she is my Kate and not his.” Was she John’s? or was it all a dream and phantasmagoria, that might vanish in an instant and leave no trace behind? He covered his eyes with his hand for a second in the sickness of jealous love with which he was struggling; but when he looked up again, found that a new revelation waited him, harder than anything he had yet had to undergo. It was that Fred Huntley was approaching himself, and that the mission with which Kate, giving him the tips of her fingers, had intrusted the man to whom of all others he felt most antagonistic, concerned himself. Fred managed the business very cleverly, and would have taken in any unsuspicious person; but John, on the contrary, was horribly suspicious, looking for pricks at all possible points. The ambassador threw himself into a vacant chair which happened to be handy, and stretched himself out comfortably in it, and said nothing for a minute. Then he yawned (was that, too, done on purpose?) and turned to John. “Were you asleep, Mitford?” he said; “I don’t much wonder. It’s very amusing, but it’s very monotonous night after night.”
“I have not had so much of it as you have, to get so tired,” said John.