remarks should have irritated you both. You must school me, Kate,” he added, with a forced smile, “what I am to do and say.” And then he went to his room, with a sense[Pg 22] that he had won the victory. And certainly, if a victory is won every time the other side is discomfited, such was the case at this moment. John did not say anything—did not even come to be comforted, but kept walking up and down at the other end of the room. It was Kate who had to go to him, to steal her hand within his arm, to coax him back to his usual composure. And it was a process not very easy to be performed. She moved him quickly enough to tender demonstrations over herself, which indeed she had no objection to, but John was chilled and discouraged and cast down to the very depths. [Pg 22] “He was only cross,” said Kate; “when he is cross I never pay any attention. Something has gone wrong in business, or that sort of thing. John, dear, say you don’t mind. It is not me that am making myself disagreeable: it is only papa.” But it was hard to get John to respond. Notwithstanding that Mr Crediton had retired and left the field open, and that Kate did all in her power to detain him, the young man left her earlier than usual, and with a suffi[Pg 23]ciently heavy heart. Kate’s father was seeking a quarrel—endeavouring to show him the falseness of his position, and make it plain how obnoxious he was. John walked all the long way home to his little lodgings, which were at the other end of the town, contemplating the dim Sunday streets, all so dark, with gleams of lamplight and dim reflections from the wet pavement—for in the mean time rain had fallen. And this was all he had for all he had sacrificed. He did not reckon Kate herself in the self-discussion. She was worth everything a man could do; but to be thus chained and bound, within sight, yet shut out from her—to be made the butt of another man’s jealous resentment—to have a seeming privilege, which was made into a kind of torture—and to have given his life for this;—what could he say even to himself? He sat down in his hard arm-chair and gazed into the flame of his two candles, and felt himself unable to do anything but brood over what had happened. He could not read nor turn his mind from the covert insult, the unwilling consent. And what was to come of it? John covered his[Pg 24] face with his hands when he came to that part of the subject. There was nothing to look forward to—nothing but darkness. It was natural that she, a spoiled child of fortune, should smile and trust in something turning up; as for John, he saw nothing
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