But John said nothing. He stood bending towards her with that great, tall, somewhat heavy figure of his. He had been talking not unagreeably so long as the two were alone, but Fred’s interposition quenched him. He stood with an inexpressible something in his look and attitude, which said, “I am here to watch over you, to serve you, not to take my ease and talk nonsense in your presence,” which brought a little colour to Kate’s cheeks. She looked at the young men in her turn, involuntarily contrasting the ease of the man of the world with the almost awkwardness of the other. Under such circumstances one knows what the verdict of a frivolous girl would naturally be. One of them could enter into all her habitual chatter, and give her all her nonsense back. He was handsomer than John Mitford, though neither was an Adonis. He was more successful; he had the _prestige_ about him of a man of intellect, and yet he was just like other people. Whereas John, without the _prestige_, was unlike other people. Kate looked at them with a curious impression on her mind, as if she were making that grand decision which the heroes of olden time used to be called upon to make between the true and the false--between Pleasure and Goodness. A slight shiver went over her, she could not tell why. Neither of them was asking anything of her at that moment. As for Fred Huntley, he had never shown the slightest inclination to ask anything of her, and yet in some mysterious way she felt as if she were deciding her fate. “You are cold--let me go and bring you a shawl,” said John. “Oh, it is nothing. It is because I have been ill. I never was so stupid in all my life before. Thanks, Mr Mitford, that is so nice,” said Kate. But she was not cold, though she accepted the shawl he brought her. She was trembling before her fate. And it was John to whom some unseen counsellor seemed to direct her. It was John she liked best, she said to herself. His was the good face, the tender eyes, the loyal soul. Why such a crisis should come upon her in the middle of a game at croquet, Kate could not imagine; nor why her innocent intention of bewildering poor John’s being for him, and giving a sharp tug at his heart-strings by way of diversion, should have changed all at once into this sudden compulsion of fate upon herself to choose or to reject. Such nonsense! when nobody was asking her--nobody thinking of such a thing! She got out of it precipitately, with the haste of fear, not knowing or caring what nonsense she spoke. “You make me so uncomfortable when you stand like that,” she cried. “Sit down, as Mr Huntley has done. There are only us three, and why should we make martyrs of ourselves? and when Mrs Mitford comes back, you can go and bring her chair under this tree. Mr Huntley, are you going to the ball at the Castle when the young Earl comes of age?”