“What does he feel? how do you know?” cried Kate; and there came such a sudden chill over her, that the very blood in her veins seemed frozen—a sensation she had never experienced before in all her life.
“It is quite clear what he feels,” said Mr Crediton; “he feels that you are out of his sphere. He sees what kind of a life you live here, and he is bewildered. How is he to give you all that, or a shadow of it? It is not difficult to divine what he feels; and the thought makes him half morose, as he was when he was here. He cannot bear to lose you, I believe; and yet he is gradually making up his mind that he must lose you. Poor fellow! I for one am very sorry for him; and unless you open a way to him out of it, I don’t see what he is to do.”
“Papa,” said Kate, with her cheeks flaming, “if he has ever given you any reason to think that he wants to be out of it, you have only to let me know.”
“I don’t want to be unjust,” said Mr Crediton, “to him or to any one. He has never spoken to me on the subject. It is not likely he should. No man could come to your father, Kate, and say, 'I have made a mistake.' I should kick him out of the house, probably, however glad I might be to hear it. And John Mitford is not the man to do anything of the kind; but his feelings may be easily divined for all that.”
Kate sat silent, with her eyes cast down, and twisted her handkerchief in her fingers. Her cheeks were burning, her eyes hot, her heart beating loud. Perhaps it might be true. While she had been calmly comparing her two lovers, feeling herself elevated in a sweet supremacy over them, and free to make her choice, it was possible that her chain had become bondage to one of them. He had gone away hurriedly, it was true. He had spoken very strangely when he went away, and he had not written to her for two long weeks. So long, indeed, had he kept silence, that she had written to him making a kind of appeal. These facts, no doubt, strengthened every word her father said, and gave to them a certain appearance of reality. Her cheeks burned, and seemed to scorch all the moisture out of her eyes; and yet she felt that only the strongest effort kept her from bursting into tears. It was a kind of relief to her when the door opened, and a man came in with Mr Crediton’s letters. At least they prevented the necessity of any answer. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, examining closely, as if it were a matter of the last importance, the embroidered cipher on her handkerchief, while her father was thus occupied. Kate took no notice how many letters he read—they were nothing to her; nor did she observe the keen glance upward which he gave at her when he had read the first he opened. She did not even remark that the crackling of the paper ceased, and there was an interval of complete stillness. When he spoke to her she started, and came back as if from a long distance. “Yes, papa,” she said, mechanically, without lifting her eyes.
“I did not think it would have come so soon,” said Mr Crediton; “and it is very strange that it should have come at this moment. He has decided the question for himself, Kate, as, one time or other, I thought he would. Look here.”
It was John’s letter he pushed across the table to her, with a feeling that it had arrived at the very moment it was wanted, at the handiest moment. And Mr Crediton was glad; but at the same time he was struck with a little compunction when he saw how eagerly Kate clutched at it, and how the colour went and came on her face. She read it without a pause, flashing her eye over its contents in a way very different from Mr Crediton’s deliberate reading. She had grown breathless in her eagerness. She threw it down on the table, yet did not leave her hold of it, and stretched across to look at the little heap of letters which remained before him. “There must be one for me,” she cried; “of course he must have explained all this in his letter to me.” When she saw that there was none for her, she rose hurriedly and rang the bell, her father all the while looking on with an amazement which he could not express in words. Was this Kate, this hasty excited creature, full of anxiety and suspense? “Go and see if there are any letters for me,” she said, imperiously, to the servant who answered the bell. She would not believe it; she stood angry and feverish, leaning against the mantelpiece with John’s letter in her hand. “The letters have been taken up-stairs, ma’am, but there are none for you,” said the man, re-entering with a tray in his hand on which were several bundles of papers carefully separated. She rushed across the room to look at them. There were half-a-dozen at least for Fred Huntley, and some for the other members of the party who were out shooting, but nothing for Miss Crediton. Kate dismissed the servant with a little wave of her hand and walked back to the fire, and stooped down over it to warm herself. She was utterly dismayed, and the ground seemed suddenly cut away from under her very feet. Her heart beat so that she could not speak a word. Was it true, then, all this that had been said to her? Her father turned his chair towards her, and the sight of his child thus stupefied with sudden pain, and half incredulous of the shock she had just received, went to his heart. But yet in his heart he believed it was best for him to drive the stroke home, and not to soothe her by suggestions that the explanation might yet come, such as occurred to him in the first softening of his thoughts.
“My darling!” he said, “of course you feel it. I feel it so much for you, Kate, that I could almost grieve, though I know it to be for the best. Make up your mind at once to think no more of him. It will be better for you both. It is a shock, but you must have been prepared for the shock. You have trifled with Fred Huntley’s feelings for a long time, as you ought not to have done had you not been more or less prepared for this. And, Kate, there is no reason why you should not reward him now.”
“Reward him! when it is he who has done it,” said Kate, under her breath.
“That is not the case; you must be aware that is not the case. I have watched you all too closely to believe in that. You have done it yourself, Kate; and, if you would believe me, this is the very best thing that could have happened. The slight must hurt, of course, at first——”