“You need not distress yourself, papa. I never spoke to Mr. Fortescue,” said Katherine.
There was a little offence in her tone. She had not forgiven Lady Jane for the fact that Mr. Fortescue, the only young man of the party, had not been allotted to her for dinner, as she felt would have been the right thing. Katherine thought him very red in the face, weatherbeaten, and dull—so far as appearances went; but she was piqued and offended at having been deprived of her rights. Did Lady Jane not think her good enough, par exemple, for young Fortescue? And her tone betrayed her, if Mr. Tredgold had taken any trouble to observe her tone.
“He need not come here to throw dust in my eyes—that’s all,” said the old man. “I want none of your landed fellows—beggars! with more to give out than they have coming in. No; the man that can put down his money on the table——”
“Don’t you think I have heard enough of your money down on the table?” said Katherine, very red and uncomfortable. “No one is likely to trouble you about me, papa, so we may leave the money alone, on the table or off it.”
“I’m not so sure about that. There’s young Fred Turny would like nothing better. And a capital fellow that. Plenty of his own, and going into all the best society, and titled ladies flinging themselves at his head. Mind you, I don’t know if you keep shilly-shallying, whether he’ll stand it long—a young fellow like that.”
“He knows very well there is no shilly-shallying about me,” said Katherine.
And she left her father’s room thinking within herself that though Lady Jane’s way of recommending a plain man was not pleasant, yet the other way was worse. Fred Turny, it was certain, would not hear of dividing his wife’s fortune with her sister, should her father’s will give it all to herself; neither would Charlie Somers, Lady Jane assured her. Would Dr. Burnet do this? Katherine, possessed for the moment of a prejudice against the doctor, doubted, though that was the ground on which he was recommended. Would any man do so? There was one man she thought (of whom she knew nothing) who would; who cared nothing about the money; whose heart had chosen herself while Stella was there in all her superior attractions. Katherine felt that this man, of whom she had seen so little, who had been out of the country for nearly four years, from whom she had never received a letter, and scarcely even could call to mind anything he had ever said to her, was the one man whom she could trust in all the world.
Dr. Burnet came that afternoon, as it was his usual day for visiting Mr. Tredgold. He was very particular in keeping to his days. It was a beautiful spring-like afternoon, and the borders round the house were full of crocuses, yellow and blue and white. The window was open in Katherine’s corner, and all the landscape outside bright with the westering light.
“What a difference,” he said, “from that snowstorm—do you remember the snowstorm? It is in this way an era for me—as, indeed, it was in the whole island. We all begin to date by it: before the snowstorm, or at the time of the snowstorm.”
“I wonder,” said Katherine, scarcely conscious of what she was saying, “why it was an era to you?”