"Geoffrey, I hope that you have not said anything that I could wish unsaid?"
"Do not look like a scared dove, sweet Kate. Have a little patience, and you shall read the letter."
"That is asking too much. I will trust to your honour—that innate sense of delicacy which I know you possess."
"You shall read the letter—I insist upon it. If you do not like it, I will write another. But you must sit down by me and listen to what I have to tell you, of my poor friend's history."
She turned her glistening eyes upon me, full of grateful thanks, and seated herself beside me on the couch. I then recounted to her the history which George had confided to me, though the narration was often interrupted by the sighs and tears of my attentive auditor.
After the melancholy tale was told, a long silence ensued. Poor Kate was too busy with her own thoughts to speak. I put the letter I had been writing into her hands, and retired to my own chamber, which opened into the one in which we were sitting, whilst she perused it. It was a simple statement of the facts related above. I had left him to draw from them what inference he pleased. When I returned an hour afterward to the sitting-room, which had been fitted up as such entirely for my accommodation, the windows opening into a balcony which ran along the whole front of the house, I found Kate leaning upon the railing, with the open letter still in her hand.
Her fine eyes were raised and full of tears, but she looked serene and happy, her beautiful face reminding me of an April sun just emerging from a soft fleecy cloud, which dimmed, only to increase by softening, the glory which it could not conceal.
"Well, dear Kate, may I finish my letter to George—for I must call him so still?"
"No."
"Why not," said I, surprised, and half angry.