He resumed his walk, lounging among the trees, the women looking after him with a mixture of fright and admiration, as calm as if nothing had happened.
The man who was beaten was followed off the field by his friends. Nor could Sir Miles get speech of them that evening. In the morning, when he went to make his murderous appointment, he found they were gone. Fighting, it would seem, was not to their liking; though an insult to a harmless gentleman was quite in their way.
“I am sorry, Harry,” I said honestly, because a woman cannot help respecting a man who is brave and strong, “that the taking of my name has caused you this trouble.”
“I am sorry, too,” he said sadly. “Yet I blame them not, Kitty.”
“But you do blame me,” I replied. “Harry, if, in a little while—somehow—I am able to show that I could not, even if I wished, grant the thing you want—if—I say—I can make that quite clear and plain to you—will you promise to be reconciled to what cannot—cannot be avoided?”
“If, Kitty—what an if? But you ask the impossible. There is no reason—there cannot be. Why, such a thing is impossible.”
“But again—if—Harry, promise me so much.”
He laughed grimly.
“Well, I promise.”
“Give me your hand upon it,” I said. “Now we shall be friends indeed. Why, you silly Harry, you let the days go by, and you neglect the most beautiful girls who could perhaps make you a hundred times as happy as Kitty, all because you deck her out with imaginary virtues which she doth not possess. Foolish Harry! Open your eyes and look about you. What do you see?”