‘I suppose not,’ she said, seriously. ‘Indeed, I am very particular about it. I don’t see why you should laugh. I should not think of going to walk in your grounds without leave, and why should you in mine? But since you are here, you must not go all that way back. If you like to come with me, I will show you a nearer way. Don’t you think it is a very fine park? Were you ever in one like it before?’
‘Yes,’ said Herbert, calmly, ‘a great many. Langton-Courtenay is very nice, but it wants size. The glades are pretty, and the trees are charming, but everything is on a small scale.’
‘On a small scale!’ Kate cried, half-choking with indignation. This unparalleled presumption took away even her voice.
‘Yes, decidedly small. How many acres are there in it? My uncle, Sir Herbert Eldridge, has five hundred acres in his. I am called after him, and I have been a great deal with him, you know. That is why I think your park so small. But it is very pretty!’ said Herbert, condescendingly, with a sense of the humour of the situation. As for Kate, she was crushed. She looked up at him first in a blaze of disdain, intending to do battle for her own, but the number of acres in Sir Herbert Eldridge’s park made an end of Kate.
‘I thought you were going to be a clergyman,’ she said.
‘So I am, I suppose; but what then?’
‘Oh! I thought—I didn’t know,’ cried Kate. ‘I supposed perhaps you were not very well off. But if you have such a rich uncle, with such a beautiful park——’
‘I don’t know what that has to do with it,’ said Bertie, with a mischievous light in his eyes. ‘We are not so very poor. We have dinners three or four times a week, and bread and cheese on the other days. A great many people are worse off than that.’
‘If you mean to laugh at me,’ said Kate, stopping short, with an angry gesture, ‘I think you had better turn back again. I am not a person to be made fun of.’ And then instantly the water rushed to her eyes, for she was as susceptible as any child is to ridicule. The young man checked himself on the verge of laughter, and apologised.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to make myself disagreeable. Besides, I don’t think you are quite well. I hope you will let me walk with you as far as the Hall.’