“Oh, yes, yes,” she replied, anxious only to put an end to his apologies.
“Well,” he rejoined with a smile which did not completely veil his earnestness, “I do find it a little more pleasant to look farther back to our Oxford visit. But you are going this way. May I turn with you?”
“I am only going home,” Kate answered coldly. He had been humble enough to her. He had said and looked all she had expected. But he was not at all the crushed, beaten man whom she had looked to meet. He was, outwardly at least, the same man who had once sought her society for a few weeks and had then slighted her and shunned her to consort with the Homfreys and their class. He had not said he was sorry for that.
He read her tone aright, and he colored furiously, growing in a second a thousand times more confused than before. It was on the cards that he would accept the rebuff, and leave her in resentment. Indeed, that was his first impulse. But the consciousness, which the next moment filled his mind, that he had deserved this, and perhaps the charm of her gray eyes and proud downturned face, overcame him. “I will come a little way with you, if you will let me,” he said, turning and walking by her side.
Kate’s heart gave a great leap. She understood both the first thought and the second, the weaker impulse and the stronger one which mastered it, and she would not have been a woman had she not felt her triumph. She hastened to find something to say, and could think only of the bazaar. She asked him if it had been a success.
“The bazaar?” he said. “To tell you the truth, I am afraid I hardly know. I should say so, now you ask me, but I have not given much thought to it since. I have been too fully occupied with other things,” he added, a note of bitterness in his voice. “Ah! Miss Bonamy,” with a fresh change of tone, “what a good fellow your cousin is!”
“Yes, he is indeed!” she answered heartily.
“I cannot tell you,” he continued, “what generous help and support he has given me during the last few days. He has been the greatest possible comfort to me.”
She looked up at him impulsively. “He is Daintry’s hero,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered laughing, “I remember that her praise made me almost jealous of him. That was when I first knew you—when I was coming to Claversham, you remember, Miss Bonamy, full of pleasant anticipations and hopes. The reality has been different. Jack has told you, of course, of Lord Dynmore’s strange attack upon me? But perhaps,” he added, checking himself, and glancing at her, “I ought not to speak to you about it, as your father is acting for him.”