“Oh, if anything should happen to him?” said Kate, with sudden agitation.
“We must just trust him to the great Keeper,” said Mrs. Murray, quietly, “in Whose keeping all are safe whether there or here.”
Then going to her valise, she took out a letter and handed it to Kate, saying: “That's his last to me. You can look at it, Kate.”
Kate took the letter and put it in her desk. “I think, perhaps, we had better go down now,” she said; “I expect Colonel Thorp has come. I think you will like him. He seems a little rough, but he is a gentleman, and has a true heart,” and they went downstairs.
It is the mark of a gentleman to know his kind. He has an instinct for what is fine and offers ready homage to what is worthy. Any one observing Colonel Thorp's manner of receiving Mrs. Murray would have known him at once for a gentleman, for when that little lady came into the drawing-room, dressed in her decent silk gown, with soft white lace at her throat, bearing herself with sweet dignity, and stepping with dainty grace on her toes, after the manner of the fine ladies of the old school, and not after the flat-footed, heel-first modern style, the colonel abandoned his usual careless manner and rose and stood rigidly at attention.
“Auntie, this is my friend, Colonel Thorp,” said Kate.
“Proud to know you madam,” said the colonel, with his finest military bow.
“And I am glad to meet Colonel Thorp; I have heard so much of him through my friends,” and she smiled at him with such genuine kindliness that the gallant colonel lost his heart at once.
“Your friends have been doing me proud,” he said, bowing to her and then to Kate.
“Oh, you needn't look at me,” said Kate; “you don't imagine I have been saying nice things about you? She has other friends that think much of you.”