She was called Miss Katherine by everybody in consequence of the dislike of her father to have any sign of superiority over her sister shown to his eldest daughter. Miss Katherine and Miss Stella meant strict equality. Neither of them was ever called Miss Tredgold.
“I am very sorry,” she said, with her soft sympathetic voice.
He looked at her, and she for a moment at him, as she gave him his cup of tea. Again she was startled, almost confused, by his look, but could not make out to herself the reason why. Then she made a little effort to recover herself, and said, with a half laugh, half shiver, “You are thinking how we once took tea together in the middle of the night.”
“On that dreadful morning?” he said. “No, I don’t know that I was, but I shall never forget it. Don’t let me bring it back to your mind.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I think of it often enough. And I don’t believe I ever thanked you, Dr. Burnet, for all you did for me, leaving everything to go over to Portsmouth, you that are always so busy, to make those inquiries—which were of so little good—and explaining everything to the Rector, and sending him off too.”
“And his inquiries were of some use, though mine were not,” he said. “Well, we are both your very humble servants, Miss Katherine: I will say that for him. If Stanley could keep the wind from blowing upon you too roughly he would do so, and it’s the same with me.”
Katherine looked up with a sudden open-eyed glance of pleasure and gratitude. “How very good of you to say that!” she cried. “How kind, how beautiful, to think it! It is true I am very solitary now. I haven’t many people to feel for me. I shall always be grateful and happy to think that you have so kind a feeling for me, you two good men.”
“Oh, as for the goodness,” he said. And then he remembered Miss Mildmay’s advice, and rubbed his hands over his eyes as if to take something out of them which he feared was there. Katherine sat down and looked at him very kindly, but her recollection was chiefly of the strong white teeth with which he had eaten the bread-and-butter in the dark of the winter morning after that night. It was the only breakfast he was likely to have, going off as he did on her concerns, and he had been called out of his bed in the middle of the night, and had passed a long time by her father’s bedside. All these things made the simple impromptu meal very necessary; but still she had kept the impression on her mind of his strong teeth taking a large bite of the bread-and-butter, which was neither sentimental nor romantic. This was about all that passed between them on that day.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The village society in Sliplin was not to be despised, especially by a girl who had no pretensions, like Katherine. When a person out of the larger world comes into such a local society, it is inevitable that he or she should look upon it with a more or less courteous contempt, and that the chief members should condole with him or her upon the inferiority of the new surroundings, and the absence of those intellectual and other advantages which he or she is supposed to have tasted in London, for example. But, as a matter of fact, the intellectual advantages are much more in evidence on the lower than on the higher ground. Lady Jane, no doubt, had her own particular box from Mudie’s and command of all the magazines, &c., at first hand; but then she read very little, having the Mudie books chiefly for her governess, and glancing only at some topic of the day, some great lady’s predilections on Society and its depravity, or some fad which happened to be on the surface for the moment, and which everybody was expected to be able to discuss. Whereas the Sliplin ladies read all the books, vying with each other who should get them first, and were great in the Nineteenth Century and the Fortnightly, and all the more weighty periodicals. They were members of mutual improvement societies, and of correspondence classes, and I don’t know all what. Some of them studied logic and other appalling subjects through the latter means, and many of them wrote modest little essays and chronicles of their reading for the press. When the University Extension Lectures were set up quite a commotion was made in the little town. Mr. Stanley, the rector, and Dr. Burnet were both on the committee, and everybody went to hear the lectures. They were one year on the History of the Merovingians, and another year on Crockery—I mean Pottery, or rather Ceramic Art—and a third upon the Arctic Circle. They were thus calculated to produce a broad general intelligence, people said, though it was more difficult to see how they extended the system of the Universities, which seldom devote themselves to such varied studies. But they were very popular, especially those which were illustrated by the limelight.