It was John’s letter he pushed across the table to her, with a feeling that it had arrived at the very moment it was wanted, at the handiest moment. And Mr Crediton was glad; but at the same time he was struck with a little compunction when he saw how eagerly Kate clutched at it, and how the colour went and came on her face. She read it without a pause, flashing her eye over its contents in a way very different from Mr Crediton’s deliberate reading. She had grown breathless in her eagerness. She threw it down on the table, yet did not leave her hold of it, and stretched across to look at the little heap of letters which remained before him. “There must be one for me,” she cried; “of course he must have explained all this in his letter to me.” When she saw that there was none for her, she rose hurriedly and rang the bell, her father all the while looking on with an amazement which he could not express in words. Was this Kate, this hasty excited creature, full of anxiety and suspense? “Go and see if there are any letters for me,” she said, imperiously, to the servant who answered the bell. She would not believe it; she stood angry and feverish, leaning against the mantelpiece with John’s letter in her hand. “The letters have been taken up-stairs, ma’am, but there are none for you,” said the man, re-entering with a tray in his hand on which were several bundles of papers carefully separated. She rushed across the room to look at them. There were half-a-dozen at least for Fred Huntley, and some for the other members of the party who were out shooting, but nothing for Miss Crediton. Kate dismissed the servant with a little wave of her hand and walked back to the fire, and stooped down over it to warm herself. She was utterly dismayed, and the ground seemed suddenly cut away from under her very feet. Her heart beat so that she could not speak a word. Was it true, then, all this that had been said to her? Her father turned his chair towards her, and the sight of his child thus stupefied with sudden pain, and half incredulous of the shock she had just received, went to his heart. But yet in his heart he believed it was best for him to drive the stroke home, and not to soothe her by suggestions that the explanation might yet come, such as occurred to him in the first softening of his thoughts. “My darling!” he said, “of course you feel it. I feel it so much for you, Kate, that I could almost grieve, though I know it to be for the best. Make up your mind at once to think no more of him. It will be better for you both. It is a shock, but you must have been prepared for the shock. You have trifled with Fred Huntley’s feelings for a long time, as you ought not to have done had you not been more or less prepared for this. And, Kate, there is no reason why you should not reward him now.” “Reward him! when it is he who has done it,” said Kate, under her breath.