"I ought to be in the House," he muttered, and he touched the bell for his valet, and dressed with less deliberation than was his wont. And during the toilet he was aware of a certain mental anger that longed to expend itself: "If Mr. Brougham is as insufferably dictatorial as he was last night, if Mr. O'Connell only plays the buffoon again, we shall meet in a narrow path--and one of us will fare ill," he muttered. The hour generally comes when we are ready for it; and Piers found both gentlemen in the tempers he detested. He gladly accepted his own challenge, and the Squire was so interested in the wordy fight that he did not return home to dinner. Mrs. Atheling neither worried nor waited. She knew that the Squire's vote might be wanted at any inconvenient hour; and, besides, the night had set stormily in, and she said cheerfully to Kate, "It wouldn't do for father to get a wetting and then be hours in damp clothes. He is far better sitting to-day's business out while he is there." But the evening dragged wearily, in spite of the efforts of both women to make little pleasantries. Kate's whole being was in her sense of hearing. She was listening for a step that did not come. On other nights there had been visitors; she heard the roll of carriages and the clash of the heavy front door; but this dreary night no roll of wheels broke the stillness of the aristocratic Square; and she listened for the sound of the closing door until she was ready to cry out against the strain and the suspense. However, the longest, saddest day wears to its end; and though it does not appear likely that a loving girl's anxiety about a coolness in her lover should teach us how far deeper, even than mother-love, is our trust in God's love, yet little Kitty's behaviour on this sorrowful evening did show forth this sublime fact. For the girl left undone none of her usual duties, left unsaid none of the pleasant words she knew her mother expected from her; she even followed her--as she always did when the Squire was late--to her bedroom, and helped her lay away her laces and jewels ere she bid her a last "good-night." But as soon as she had closed the door of her own room, she felt she might give herself some release. If she did not read the whole of the Evening Service, _God would understand_. She could trust His love to excuse, to pity, to release her from all ceremonies. She knelt down, she bowed her head, and said only the two or three words which opened her heart and let the rain of tears wash all her anxieties away.