“I am sorry to have left you so long by yourselves,” he said, with a little air of attempted jauntiness, which sat very strangely on him, “and to have kept Mr Crediton away from you; but we had a great deal to talk over, and business, you know, must be attended to. My dear, it was business of a very momentous kind. And now, Miss Kate,” said the Rector, turning upon her, and holding out both his hands--he smiled, but his smile was very limp, like his tie, and even his hands, though not expressive generally, trembled a little--“now, Miss Kate, for the first time I feel at liberty to speak to you. You must have thought me very hard and cold the other night; but now I have your father’s permission to bid you welcome to my family,” Dr Mitford went on, smiling a ghastly smile; and he stooped over her and kissed her forehead, and held her hands, waving them up and down as if he did not know what to do with them. “I don’t know why my son has not come to be the first to tell you. Everything is settled at last!” “Where is John?” cried Mrs Mitford, with her soft cheeks blazing. And her husband dropped Kate’s hands as if they had burned him, and they all paused and looked at each other with an embarrassment and restraint which nobody could disguise. “To do him justice, I don’t think he felt himself equal to a grand tableau of family union and rapture,” said Mr Crediton. “Mrs Mitford, I don’t pretend to be overjoyed. I don’t see why we should make any pretences about it. They have done a very foolish thing, and probably they will repent of it----” But this was more than John’s mother could bear. “One of them, I am sure, will never have any reason to repent of it,” she said, with irrepressible heat, not thinking of the double meaning that her words might bear. “I hope it may be so,” Mr Crediton said, and shook his head. And there was again a silence, and Kate sat with all her veins swelling as if they would burst, and her heart beating in her very throat, and nobody taking any further notice of her. What was it to any of them in comparison with what it was to her? and yet nobody even looked at her. It seemed so utterly incredible, that for the moment she was stunned and dumb, and capable of nothing but amazement. “No,” said her father again, after a pause; “I don’t pretend to be overjoyed. We have had a great deal of talk, and the talk has not been agreeable. And, Mrs Mitford, if I am to judge by your looks, I should say you were no more happy at the thought of losing your son than I am at that of losing my daughter--in so foolish a way.” “Let us hope it may turn out better than we think,” said Dr Mitford; and then came the inevitable pause, which made every sentence sound so harsh and clear. “There is certainly room for the hope,” said Mr Crediton; “fortunately it must be a long time before anything comes of it. Your son seems to have quite relinquished the thought of going into the Church.”