I daresay not, indeed, Fred Huntley said in his heart; but he only looked politely indifferent, and made a little bow. “Perhaps it was better she did not, for the boat is very small,” said John, carrying on the explanation. Was it an apology they were making for themselves? And so all at once, notwithstanding Kate’s romance about the knight on the white horse, all the enchantment disappeared from the fairy wood. Birds and rabbits and squirrels, creatures of natural history, pursued their common occupations about, without any fairy suggestions. It was only the afternoon sun that slanted among the trees, showing it was growing late, and not showers of golden arrows. The wood became as commonplace as a railroad, and Kate Crediton related to Fred Huntley how she was going home, and what was to happen, and how she hoped to meet his sisters at the Camelford ball. Thus the crisis which John thought was to decide everything for him passed off in bathos and commonplace. He walked on beside the other two, who did all the talking, eating his heart. Had she been playing with him, making a joke of his sudden passion? But then she would give him a glance from time to time which spoke otherwise. “There is still an evening and a morning,” John said to himself; and he stood like a churl at the Rectory gate, and suffered Huntley to ride on without the slightest hint of a possibility that he should stay to dinner. Such inhospitable behaviour was not common at Fanshawe Regis. But there are moments in which politeness, kindness, neighbourly charities, must all give way before a more potent feeling, and John Mitford had arrived at one of these. And his heart was beating, his head throbbing, all his pulses going at the highest speed and out of tune--or, at least, that was his sensation. Kate disappeared while he stood at the gate, shutting it carefully upon Fred, and heaven knows what frightful interval might be before him ere he could resume the interrupted conversation, and demand the answer to which surely he had a right!