Kate would have gone on to her room to make herself "presentable," but for her father, who came from behind, and before she could object she was being introduced to "Mr. Harry Hall."
Standing before her "betrothed," Kate looked very charming in her embarrassment, and Mr. Hall could not altogether conceal his admiration.
He was quite a handsome fellow of about twenty-three, tall and slender, sported a moustache of the most approved style, and dressed in exquisite taste. A cool, elegant fellow was Harry Hall, and before a week had elapsed Kate found herself thinking more about him than she would have cared to acknowledge. What particularly pleased her was his refraining from hinting, in any way, at the "betrothal." Mr. Hall, however, was too good a general to make any such mistake—he knew how to wait. The French say—"Everything comes to him who waits," and it soon became evident to Mr. Stafford that, unless something unforeseen happened, his old partner's son would carry out his father's wishes, and carry off his daughter.
It is, however, the unforeseen which usually does happen, and one afternoon Kate upset the little boat in which she was in the habit of going rowing.
The boat, built for herself, was just large enough to hold one person, and Hall, who now accompanied her almost everywhere, had to be content with walking along the bank.
They had traversed but a short distance, when, in answering some remark of Hall's, one of the oars slipped from Kate's grasp. In the instinctive move to recover it, she upset the boat, and sank, with a loud scream for help.
Though but thirty feet away, Hall made no effort to assist or rescue the drowning girl. He stood on the bank as though rooted to the spot. Great beads of perspiration stood on his brow, and he wrung his hands in agony—none the less great for its silence.
Almost every one fears some particular being or thing more than any other. In Hall's case it was water; he had a perfect horror of it, in bulk, and for that reason could not swim a stroke.
It would have been all over with Kate in a minute or two, had not a passer-by, attracted by her cry for help, come to the rescue. Taking in the situation at a glance, he plunged into the stream, and, from the very impetus of his spring, reached the fast drowning girl.
An ordinary man would have found it no easy task—burdened as the rescuer was with all his clothes, and the weight of a strong, healthy girl—to reach and scramble up the bank unaided; but the stranger managed to do so, and with a contemptuous smile asked Hall if the lady was known to him.