Major Clare sat by the fire in his brother's study at the Vicarage,
smoking a cigar, and reflecting on the course of events. He had gone
from home with a half intention of delaying that course of events, and
he had returned with another half intention of precipitating it.
With much affection on both sides, he was getting tired of his stay at
the Vicarage, and his brother's family were perhaps beginning to feel
that they had suited all their arrangements to him for a long enough
time.
"It would be such a good thing for Robert to marry and settle," and
Robert himself thought so too. It was many a long year since that great
unsettlement had come to him when things had gone wrong with his first
hopes, and he could not have the girl he wanted. He had tried to fall
in love several times since, and he was trying now, moved certainly by
Kate's fair fortune, and yet not quite mercenary enough to be
indifferent to the want of spontaneous pleasure in his wooing. If
either face could have recalled to him that never-forgotten one, it
would not have been Kate's. He had idly wished that the cousins would
change places in the beginning of their acquaintance, but he could not
allow himself to wish it now; and had indeed fully made up his mind to
the piece of good fortune that seemed to have fallen at his feet--only,
he was not in a hurry to secure it. Nevertheless it was dull, and he
should like to see Kate blush and brighten at the sight of him.
So he discovered that Minnie wanted to go up to Kingsworth, and prepared
to escort her thither.
Walter Kingsworth meanwhile had been seized with a fit of compunction
and alarm, at the idea he had suggested to the unprepared mind of his
cousin; the lawyer and the man of business awoke within him, as he
reflected on the responsibility he had incurred in driving to a hasty
resolution a girl so inexperienced as Kate.
He reflected on this, it is to be feared, all through the afternoon
service to which he accompanied his cousins, and afterwards as they
walked along the road till their ways divided, he caught a chance of
saying,--
"Miss Kingsworth, you must not suppose I meant to say that any special
line of conduct is incumbent on you. So imperfectly knowing the
circumstances, how can I judge?"
"You can't put the idea out of my head, now that you have put it in,
cousin Walter," said Kate, with blunt gravity. "But I shall not be of
age for thirteen months, so I have plenty of time to think about it."
And she did think about it with a new reticence that proved her to be,
after all, her mother's daughter. Slowly she recognised that she must
make her own decision, that she did stand alone. She read her uncle's
letter over again, and saw that it was framed so as not to exclude the
possibility of any decision. She was still child enough not to care
very much about the position she would sacrifice, "for I might make
mamma promise not to go back to Applehurst," she thought, but the view
that came to her most forcibly, perhaps from a sort of unconscious
opposition to the pressure of her mother's feelings, was that by
declaring herself the false heiress, she might be doing a wrong to her
father's memory. "It would make people _sure_ he had cheated, and
perhaps, after all, he did not," she thought, and then suddenly there
came over her hard struggle for wisdom and sense, a thought so sweet, so
absorbing, that all her trouble seemed to melt away in the warmth of it.
_If_ Major Clare were her lover, then _he_ would know what was right.
If she could tell _him_--poor Kate's heart went out with a yearning
longing desire, and it never struck her then that in honour, he ought to
be told of her doubts if ever in real truth he were her lover. Never--
till in some novel that she was reading, the plot turned on such a
concealment. "Should I be a `villain' if I didn't tell him that perhaps
I mean to give it up?" she thought. "Dear me, I had no idea how easy it
was to be wicked! How he would despise me!"
Poor Katharine had not much notion of that other and Higher Counsel,
which her uncle's letter had advised her to seek. She had been taught
to be dutiful and reverent; but it did not occur to her that "saying her
prayers" would help her in her present trouble, though as she
scrupulously asked in the unaltered language of her childhood to be
"made good," and helped to obey her mother, she found perhaps more
guidance than she knew.
And then Major Clare came back, and in the glow and brightness of his
increased attention, Kate was too happy to think of anything else,
definitely or long. Emberance was wide awake now, and scrupulously
careful not to interfere, and as Minnie and Rosa Clare were equally on
the alert, opportunities did not lack. To go to the Vicarage and help
to cover books for the Lending Library was a piece of parochial
usefulness that even Mrs Kingsworth could not forbid to her young
ladies, and if Uncle Bob did hang about with his newspaper, till he
finally discarded it, and pasted and papered, with a firmness and
handiness astonishing to the young ladies, it could only be regarded as
good nature to his nieces--nay, between dining-room and drawing-room,
mixing paste and getting afternoon tea, if a tete-a-tete could have been
avoided, at least it did not seem unnatural.
Not unnatural, only intensely important, more important than anything in
the world to Kate, and strangely silencing and embarrassing to the
Major, as he looked at the little figure kneeling on the hearth-rug,
stroking the Vicarage cat, with the firelight reddening and brightening
her hair, and the uncertain light or her uncertain feeling, softening
her fresh rosy face.
"Well," said Major Clare, "I never thought to paste my fingers in Rosa's
service."
"You paste better than any of us."
"Masculine superiority?"
"I suppose so," said the straightforward Kate.
"Do you think it has been a very dull day?" said Major Clare, coming
nearer, and leaning his arms on the mantelpiece, "though we have been
employed in such a dull occupation?"
"I haven't been dull at all."
"Nor I. Kate, do you think I have been pasting books to please Rosa?"
"Haven't you?"
"No, indeed--shall I tell you what brought me? shall I tell you what I
hope may be the end of a wandering homeless life?"
She looked up with that in her eyes, which, had he met them, must have
brought the scene to a point at once, and given it a very different
ending. But he was looking into the fire, and went on with a sort of
sense that explanation was her due--went on talking of himself. "There
has always been a great want in my life, and I'm grown old. I want to
tell you something that a younger fellow would have got out in half the
time. Has a battered old soldier any right to think his story would
interest _you_?"
"I don't think you're old," said Kate, abruptly, "but I ought, I want to
tell you something first."
Poor child, in the last word she showed that she understood him, as half
with a longing for his counsel, half with a sense of honour towards
himself, she said, "You know, I suppose, all the story about my father
and Emberance's."
"I do not care a straw for old scandals."
"They're not scandals, at least mamma says it is true. So I am not sure
if when I come of age--I ought not to give it back--I haven't decided.
But they say it is mine only through--a cheat."
"Who has filled your mind with such a ridiculous scruple?" exclaimed the
Major in rather unloverlike tones.
"No one, but I haven't decided, only if I do decide that Kingsworth
ought to belong to Emberance, I shall give it to her. That's all."
She spoke with a blunt simplicity, that jarred on Major Clare. If she
had been woman enough to care for him, he thought she could not have
checked his love tale with her scruple. She paused, half choked with
the effort of speaking, and a sudden whirl of temptation seized the
Major's soul--Emberance! Emberance the heiress! What then? What did
the child mean? _Was_ there a flaw in her title? He hesitated and was
silent, and forgot that the child was a woman after all, though in her
very simplicity unable to understand a doubt.
She saw the test that she had never meant for a test, tell its tale.
She knew the sacrifice that honour demanded, she knew _how_ she must
suffer for her father's sin.
"He only cared for Kingsworth!" she thought, "he doesn't love _me_!" and
without giving Major Clare a moment's time to achieve the self-conquest,
on which he would probably have resolved, without letting him adjust his
thoughts or his feelings, she sprang up from the hearth-rug.
"You needn't tell me the rest of your story now. I don't want to hear
any more of it. I shall go to tea," and she fled from him before he
could say a word. She threw away her chance, where an older or more
prudent woman would have kept it. The question was if it were worth
keeping. He did not rush after her, and catch her, and silence all her
doubts with one vehement protest, but he stamped his foot with anger at
her impatience and want of confidence, and believed that he would have
been true to her had she given him the chance.
Kate rushed into the drawing-room because it was the easiest way of
escape from him, and not till she was there in the midst of the group of
girls did she become conscious that she was trembling, and almost
sobbing, hardly able to make a pretence of composure.
"Where's Uncle Bob?" said Minnie.
Kate murmured something about the dining-room. Emberance glanced at
her, and said,--
"Kitty, we mustn't stay for tea, it is so dark, let us go home. Come,--
come and put your hat on."
Rosa and Minnie were not so utterly devoid of expectation that
"something might have happened," as to offer any objection to this
proposal, and Kate hurried away with scarcely a word of farewell. She
sped along the lane, still in silence, and Emberance thought it better
not to speak to her, though much at a loss to know what could have
passed. Surely no happy emotion could take such a form as this, such
bitter sobs could not come of any mere excitement and agitation.
"Kitty, my darling," she said at length, "what has happened to you?"