By that strange luck which so often seems to regulate human affairs, Dr. Burnet chose this evening of all others for the explanation of his sentiments. He paid Mr. Tredgold an evening visit, and found him very well; and then he went out to join Katherine, whom he saw walking on the path that edged the cliff. It was a beautiful June evening, serene and sweet, still light with the lingering light of day, though the moon was already high in the sky. There was no reason any longer why Dr. Burnet should restrain his feelings. His patient was well; there was no longer any indecorum, anything inappropriate, in speaking to Katherine of what she must well know was nearest to his heart. He, too, had been conscious of the movement in the air—the magnetic communication from him to her on the day of Mr. Tredgold’s first outing, when they had met the Rector, and he had congratulated them. To Katherine it had seemed almost as if in some way unknown to herself everything had been settled between them, but Dr. Burnet knew different. He knew that nothing had been settled, that no words nor pledge had passed between them; but he had little doubt what the issue would be. He felt that he had the matter in his own hands, that he had only to speak and she to reply. It was a foregone conclusion, nothing wanting but the hand and seal.
Katherine had scarcely got beyond the condition of dreaming in which she had spent the afternoon. She was a little impatient when she saw him approaching. She did not want her thoughts to be disturbed. Her thoughts were more delightful to her than anything else at this moment, and she half resented the appearance of the doctor, whom her mind had forsaken as if he had never been. The dreaming state in which she was, the preoccupation with one individual interest is a cruel condition of mind. At another moment she would have read Dr. Burnet’s meaning in his eyes, and would have been prepared at least for what was coming—she who knew so well what was coming, who had but a few days ago acquiesced in what seemed to be fate. But now, when he began to speak, Katherine was thunderstruck. A sort of rage sprang up in her heart. She endeavoured to stop him, to interrupt the words on his lips, which was not only cruel but disrespectful to a man who was offering her his best, who was laying himself, with a warmth which he had scarcely known to be in him, at her feet. He was surprised at his own ardour, at the fire with which he made his declaration, and so absorbed in that that he did not for the first moment see how with broken exclamations and lifted hands she was keeping him off.
“Oh, don’t, doctor! Oh, don’t say so, don’t say so!” were the strange words that caught his ear at last; and then he shook himself up, so to speak, and saw her standing beside him in the gathering dimness of the twilight, her face not shining with any sweetness of assent, but half convulsed with pain and shame, her hands held up in entreaty, her lips giving forth these words, “Oh, don’t say so!”
It was his turn to be struck dumb. He drew up before her with a sudden pause of consternation.
“What?” he cried—“what?” not believing his ears.
And thus they stood for a moment speechless, both of them. She had stopped him in the middle of his love tale, which he had told better and with more passion than he was himself sensible of. She had stopped him, and now she did not seem to have another word to say.
“It is my anxiety which is getting too much for me,” he said. “You didn’t say that, Katherine—not that? You did not mean to interrupt me—to stop me? No. It is only that I am too much in earnest—that I am frightening myself——”
“Oh, Dr. Burnet!” she cried, instinctively putting her hands together. “It is I who am to blame. Oh, do not be angry with me. Let us part friends. Don’t—don’t say that any more!”
“Say what?—that I love you, that I want you to be my wife? Katherine, I have a right to say it! You have known for a long time that I was going to say it. I have been silent because of—for delicacy, for love’s sake; but you have known. I know that you have known!” he cried almost violently, though in a low voice.
She had appealed to him like a frightened girl; now she had to collect her forces as a woman, with her dignity to maintain. “I will not contradict you,” she said. “I cannot; it is true. I can only ask you to forgive me. How could I stop you while you had not spoken? Oh no, I will not take that excuse. If it had been last night it might have been otherwise, but to-day I know better. I cannot—it is impossible! Don’t—oh don’t let us say any more.”