“That shows,” he cried, with something like a stamp of his foot and an impatient movement of his hand, “how much I have to contend with. You think of me as nothing but your clergyman—a—a sort of pedagogue—and your thought is that he is displeased—that there is something he is going to find fault with——”
“No,” she said. “You are too kind to find fault; but—— I am sure I never neglect anything you say to me. Tell me what it is—and I—I will not take offence. I will do my very best——”
“Oh, how hard it is to make you understand! You put me on a pedestal—whereas it is you who—— Katherine! do you know that you are not a little girl any longer, but a woman, and a—most attractive one? I have struggled against it, knowing that was not the light in which I can have appeared to you, but it’s too strong for me. I have come to tell you of a feeling which has existed for years on my part—and to ask you—if there is any possibility, any hope, to ask you—to marry me——” The poor rector! his voice almost died away in his throat. He put one knee to the ground—not, I need not say, with any prayerful intention, but only to put himself on the same level with her, with his hands on the edge of her table, and gazed into her face.
“To—— What did you say, Mr. Stanley?” she asked, with horror in her eyes.
“Don’t be hasty, for the sake of heaven! Don’t condemn me unheard. I know all the disparities, all the—— But, Katherine, my love for you is more than all that. I have been trying to keep it down for years. I said, to marry me—to marry me, my dear and only——”
“Do you mean that you are on your knees to me, a girl whom you have catechised?” cried Katherine severely, holding her head high.
The rector stumbled up in great confusion to his feet. “No, I did not mean that. I was not kneeling to you. I was only—— Oh, Katherine, how small a detail is this! God knows I do not want to make myself absurd in your eyes. I am much older than you are. I am—but your true lover notwithstanding—for years; and your most fond and faithful—— Katherine! if you will be my wife——”
“And the mother of Charlotte and Bertie!” said Katherine, looking at him with shining eyes. “Charlotte is a year younger than I am. She comes between Stella and me; and Bertie thinks he is in love with me too. Is it that you come and offer to a girl, Mr. Stanley? Oh, I know. Girls who are governesses and poor have it offered to them and are grateful. But I am as well off as you are. And do you think it likely that I would want to change my age and be my own mother for the sake of—what? Being married? I don’t want to be married. Oh, Mr. Stanley, it is wicked of you to confuse everything—to change all our ways of looking at each other—to——” Katherine almost broke down into a torrent of angry tears, but controlled herself for wrath’s sake.
The rector stood before her with his head down, as sorely humiliated a man as ever clergyman was. “If you take it in that light, what can I say? I had hoped you would not take it in that light. I am not an old man. I have not been accustomed to—apologise for myself,” he said, with a gleam of natural self-assertion. He, admired of ladies for miles round—to the four seas, so to speak—on every hand. He could have told her things! But the man was digne; he was no traitor nor ungrateful for kindness shown him. “If you think, Katherine, that the accident of my family and of a very early first marriage is so decisive, there is perhaps nothing more to be said. But many men only begin life at my age; and I think it is ungenerous—to throw my children in my teeth—when I was speaking to you—of things so different——”
“Oh, Mr. Stanley,” cried Katherine, subdued, “I am very, very sorry. I did not mean to throw—anything in your teeth. But how could anyone forget Charlotte and Bertie and Evelyn and the rest? Do you call them an accident—all the family?” Katherine’s voice rose till it was almost shrill in the thought of this injury to her friends. “But I only think of you as their father and my clergyman—and always very, very kind,” she said.