“You are a good fellow, Fred,” said Mr Crediton; “God bless you! I can never forget how well you have behaved. You can scarcely feel it more than I do,” he added, with something rising in his throat. Huntley wrung his hand, but shook his head a little and did not speak. They were in the wrong, and Fred had been almost a traitor; but yet they had their feelings too, and he felt it more than the father did--who had not lost her, and would come round and forgive--more than anybody could have supposed Fred Huntley would feel anything. The people in the drawing-room said to each other how pale he was. “Is it all because Kate has a headache?” they asked each other; but he did his best to replace the missing host, and went off in the morning without saying a word to anybody. “I am not much of a good fellow,” he said to himself bitterly, “but still I am not such a cad as to shriek out when I am beaten; and I am beaten, worse luck!” Thus Fred Huntley disappeared and was seen no more. Next morning John was allowed to go in under his mother’s charge to Kate’s room, where she sat up in her bed, still pale, but growing red as a rose at the sight of him, wrapt in Mrs Mitford’s dressing-gown. The kind woman had a little doubt whether it was quite right; but as she was present every moment of the time, and heard every word they said, there could not be any great harm done: and it was right that she should know all that her father had said. “Must I go back to-day? am I able?” she said, with supplication in her eyes, looking at Mrs Mitford; but soon was quite diverted from that subject by hearing of John’s appointment for that morning to meet her father at the bank. “I wonder what different arrangements he will make,” she said, looking up in her lover’s face, and pressing in her little hand the big fingers which held hers. Her face grew solemn gazing up at him. If she could but have gone with him, stood by him, made sure that there would be nothing to vex him. Kate had been down to the lowest depths last night, and had sought help, and knew herself incapable of giving it; but in the morning Kate was a different woman, and longed to interfere and defend her own, and take into her hands once more the guidance of affairs. The mother and the son looked at each other, and then Mrs Mitford spoke. “My dear,” she said, faltering, “I hope you will not be much disappointed. You can see yourself that the other way did not bring a blessing. Kate, before you came last night, John had made up his mind to be a clergyman after all.”