‘Do?’ he said, with an unsteady laugh—‘make an utter fool of myself, I suppose—as, indeed, I have done all along. I am such a fool still, that I can’t bear to be cross-examined about my folly. Don’t say any more about it, please.’
‘But, if I were you, I would say a great deal more about it,’ said Kate, growing breathless with her resolution. ‘Look here, Bertie—don’t start like that—of course I have always called you Bertie within myself. I wonder how the Queen felt, when—— I am very, very much ashamed of myself; but you can’t see me, which is one good thing. Is it because I am rich you are afraid? For if that is all——’
‘What then?—what then, Kate?’
Half an hour after, Kate walked into the little drawing-room, where so many things had happened, where her aunt was sitting alone, waiting for her return. Her eyes were like two stars, and blazed in the light which dazzled them, and filled them with moisture. A red scarf, which had been wrapped round her throat, hung loosely over her shoulders. Her face was all aglow with the clear, keen night air. She came in quietly, and came up to Mrs. Anderson, and knelt down by her side in front of the fire. ‘Aunt,’ she said, ‘don’t be angry. I have been doing a very strange thing. I hope you will not think it wicked. I have proposed to Bertie Hardwick.’
‘Kate, my darling, are you mad?—are you out of your senses?’
‘No,’ said the girl, quietly, and with a sigh. ‘But I am a kind of a princess. What can I do? He gave me encouragement, auntie, or I would not have done it; and I think he has accepted me,’ she said, with a laugh; then, putting down her crimsoned face upon the lap of the woman who had been a mother to her, burst into a tempest of tears.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
There is nothing perfect in this world. If Bertie Hardwick had been like his cousin, a great county potentate, on the same level as Miss Courtenay of Langton-Courtenay, they would both have been happier in their betrothal. Royal marriages are sometimes very happy, but it must be hard upon a Queen to be obliged to take the initiative in such a matter; and it was hard upon Kate, notwithstanding that she did it bravely, putting away all false pride. And though Bertie Hardwick went home floating, as it were, through the wintry air, in one sense, in a flood of delicious and unimaginable happiness; yet, in another sense, he walked very prosaically along a flinty, frost-bound road, and knocked his feet against stones and frozen cart-ruts, as he took the short way home to the Rectory. Cold as it was, he walked about the garden half the night, and smoked out many cigars, half thinking of Kate’s loveliness and sweetness, half of the poor figure he would cut—not even a briefless barrister, a poor Templar reading for the law—as the husband of the great heiress. Why had not she been Ombra, and Ombra the heiress? But, in that case, of course, they could not have married, or dreamt of marrying at all. He thought it over till his head ached, till his brain swam. Ought he to give up such a hope? ought he to wound her and destroy all his own hopes of happiness, and perhaps hers, because she was rich and he was poor?—or should he accept this happiness which was put into his hands, which he had never hoped for, never dared to do anything to gain?
His mother waking, and hearing steps, rushed to the window in the cold, and looking out saw the red glow of his cigar curving round and round, and out and in among the trees. What could be the matter with the boy? She opened the window, and put out her head, though it was so cold, and called to him that he would get his death; that he would be frost-bitten; that he was mad to expose himself so. ‘My dear boy, for heaven’s sake, go to bed!’ she cried; and her voice rung out into the deep night and stillness so that it was heard in the sexton’s cottage, where it was supposed to be a cry for help against robbers. Old John drew the bed-clothes over his old nose at the sound, and breathed a sigh for his Rector, who, he thought, was probably being smothered in his bed at that moment—but it was too cold to interfere.
Next morning, Bertie had a long conversation with his father, and the two together proceeded to the Hall, where they had a still longer interview with Mr. Courtenay. It was not a pleasant interview. Kate had already seen her uncle, as in duty bound seeing the part which she had taken upon herself in the transaction, and Mr. Courtenay had foamed at the mouth with disgust and rage.