you are in love, you know, it is quite proper to say all that sort of thing to one girl; but I don’t think it ought to be wasted upon anybody. Please tell me, did your father see me? and did you think it very dreadful when I came like that, peeping in at the door?”

John was not accustomed to be driven like this from one subject to another. By the time he had got himself to the vein of laughter she had beco{60}me solemn; and now when his natural enthusiasm had been roused, she tossed him back again like a shuttlecock to the fun of the situation. Transitions so quick startled his unaccustomed mind. “I—was surprised,” he faltered, looking at her, wondering what kind of creature this was that could jump from one mood to another in the twinkling of an eye.

{60}

“I never saw you sitting there in the corner,” cried Kate. “I thought I had it all my own way. It was so stupid of me. You must have thought what a stupid she is, peeping, and never perceiving that she is found out. I can’t tell you how ashamed I was when I saw you. Did you think I was a thief, or a mad woman, or what did you think?”

“I thought——” said John, and then in his embarrassment paused, not knowing how to make the compliment which rose to his lips. It was no compliment, so far as his consciousness went. Had she been able to see into his mind, she would have seen an imagination too high-flown to be put into words. He could not give it any expression, having no experience as yet in the art of insinuated meanings. “Of course I knew it must be Miss Crediton,” h{61}e said, with a blush, after that pause; and he had not even ventured with his eyes to say the rest, but looked down, confused, afraid to meet her glance, and played with his watch-chain, and felt himself a fool—which, indeed, Kate would scarcely have hesitated to say he was.

{61}

“After all it did not require a very close application of your mind to guess that,” she said, half piqued; and then yawned softly, and then opened a book, and looked at two of the pictures,—and then added, “How long Mrs Mitford is of coming home!”

“Shall I go and look for her?” cried bewildered John, rising up with an alacrity which confirmed Kate in her low opinion of him. And he actually went away to the hall-door and took his hat, and went off down the avenue to quicken his mother’s return, leaving Kate in a state of consternation, which, after a few minutes, bubbled back into laughter. “Oh what a goose he is!” she said to herself, and yet 

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