Kate! Mr Crediton asked himself why he had ever consented to it, when he saw John’s pale face at his table. He had done it--because Kate had set her heart upon it--because he thought Kate would be fickle and change her mind--because--he could scarcely tell why; but always with the thought that it would come to nothing. He would not allow, when any one asked him, that there was an engagement. “There is some nonsense of the kind,” he would say, “boy and girl trash. I take it quietly because I know it never can come to anything. He saved her that time her horse ran away with her, and it is just a piece of romantic gratitude on her part. If I opposed it I should make her twice as determined, and therefore I don’t oppose.” He had said as much to almost everybody at Fernwood, though neither of the two most immediately concerned were aware. And this was another reason why the strangers were mystified, and could not make out what it meant. As for Kate, though she had been so anxious for his coming, it cannot be said that it made her very happy; for the first time the complications of the matter reached her. She was not, as when she had been at Fanshawe, a disengaged young lady able to give up her time to her lover, but, on the contrary, the mistress of the house, with all her guests to look after, and a thousand things to think of. She could not sit and talk with him, or walk with him, as she had done at the Rectory. He could not secure the seat next to her, or keep by her side, as, in other circumstances, it would have been so natural for him to do. He got her left hand at table the first day of his arrival, and was happy, and thought this privilege was always to be his; but, alas! the next day was on the other side, unable so much as to catch a glimpse of her. “I am the lady of the house. I have to be at everybody’s beck and call,” she said, trying to smooth him down. “On the contrary, you ought to do just what you please,” said foolish John; and he wandered about all day seeking opportunities to pounce upon her--for, to be sure, he cared for nobody and nothing at Fernwood but Kate, and he was ill and sensitive, and wanted to be cared for, even petted, if that could have been. He could not go out to ride with the rest of the party on account of his injured hand, but Kate had to go, or thought she must, leaving him alone to seek what comfort was possible in the library. No doubt it was very selfish of John to wish to keep her back from anything that was a pleasure to her, but then he was an eager, ardent lover, who had been much debarred from her society, and was set on edge by seeing others round her who were more like her than he was. To be left behind, or to find himself shut out all day from so much as a word with her, was one pang; but to find even when he was with her, that he had little to say that interested her, and to see her return to the common crowd as soon as any excuse occurred to make it possible, was far harder and struck more deep.