Mr Crediton gave a start, as if he had been shot. “About--John. What does this mean?” he cried, becoming alarmed. “What is it? I remember most things that concern you, but I don’t recollect anything particular I said.” “Yes, papa; you warned me about--John. But it has not quite come true,” she added, lowering her voice, and leaning on him, with her head against his arm; “or rather, it has come more than true. Papa, don’t be angry. I came out on purpose to tell you. They are in a dreadful state about it. It is making poor Mrs Mitford quite ill. She thinks you will think they had some hand in it, but indeed they had not. Papa, dear, promise me you will not be angry. I--I am--engaged--to John.” Mr Crediton was a very decorous, respectable man, not addicted to outbursts of passion, but at this wonderful announcement he swore a prodigious oath, and drew his arm away from her, giving her unawares a thrust aside which made her reel. Kate was so bewildered, so frightened, so dismayed by this personal touch that she blushed crimson the one moment, and the next began to cry. She stood gazing at him, with the big tears dropping, and the most piteous look in her eyes. “Oh, papa, don’t kill me!” she cried, in her consternation, sinking into the very hedge, in horror of his violence. Mr Crediton was so excited that he paid no attention to her cry of terror. “The d----d scoundrel!” he cried. “What! come in like this behind my back and rob me--take advantage of my sense of obligation--curse him! Curse them all! That’s your pious people!” And the man raved and blasphemed for five minutes at least, as if he had been his own groom, and not a respectable gentleman with grey hairs on his head, and the cares of half the county in his hands. All this time Kate was too frightened to speak; but she was not the kind of girl to be long overwhelmed by such a fit of passion. She shrank back farther into the hedge, and grew as white as her dress, and trembled a good deal, and could not utter a word. But gradually her courage returned to her. Her heart began to thump less wildly against her breast, but rose and swelled instead with a force which was half self-will and half a generous sense of injustice. When Mr Crediton came to himself--which he did all at once with some very big words in his mouth, and his hand clenched in the air, and his face blazing with fury--he stopped short all at once, and cast an alarmed look at his daughter. Good heavens! he, a respectable man, to utter such exclamations, and in Kate’s presence! He came to himself all in a moment, and metaphorically fell prostrate before her with confusion and shame. “Well,” he said, half fiercely, half humbly, “it is not much wonder if a man should forget himself. How do you dare to stand there and face me, and put such a thing into words?”