“That is all very well, my dear fellow,” said Huntley; “but Kate Crediton is an heiress, and a very nice girl; and if you were to go in for her, I can tell you it would be a very good thing for you.” This time John grew pale--so pale that the keen observer by his side was filled with sudden consternation, and could not make it out. “Suppose, in the mean time, we go in to tea,” he said, with a curious sternness. Not another word was said, for Huntley was too much a man of the world to repeat an unpalatable piece of advice; but he was rather relieved, on the whole, when the ceremonial was over, the tea swallowed, and half an hour of talk in the drawing-room added on to the talk on the lawn. “I should like to know what _she_ means by it,” Fred said to himself, indignantly, as he rode home to dinner. John Mitford was a simpleton, an innocent, an ass, if you please; but Kate knew what was what, and must have some idea where she was drifting. And what could she mean, did anybody know? She herself did not know, at least. She was very good to John all that evening, asking him questions about his Oxford life, and humouring him in a hundred little ways, of which he himself was but half conscious. And after dinner it so happened that they were left in the garden together, for Mrs Mitford had relaxed a little in the sternness of the chaperone’s duties, which were new to her, and began to forget that the boy and the girl were each other’s natural enemies. It was a lovely night, and Kate lingered and walked round and round the old house till she was compelled at last to acknowledge herself tired. And John, well pleased, gave her his arm; and it was only when she had accepted that support, and had him at a vantage, that she put the question she had been meditating. The soft air enclosed them round and round, and the soft darkness, and all the delicate odours and insensible sounds of night. He could scarcely see her, and yet she was leaning on him with her face raised and his bent, each toward the other. Then it was, with just a little pressure of his arm to give emphasis to her question, that she opened her batteries upon him at one _coup_. “Is it really true,” she said, with a certain supplication in her voice, “that you are determined to be a clergyman, Mr John?” “True!” he said, staggering under it as he received the blow, and in his confusion not knowing what to say. “Yes, true. Will you tell me? I should so very much like to know.” And then John’s heart stood still for one painful moment. The question was so easy to ask, and the answer was not so easy. He drew his breath like a man drowning, before he could muster strength to reply. CHAPTER VIII.