“Do you think that mends matters?” said Fred, with now a little indignation mingling in his sadness. “If you put it into plain English, this is what it means:--I was something so insignificant to you, taken up as you were with your own love, that it never occurred to you that I might suffer. You never thought of me at all. If you had said you had meant it, and had taken the trouble to make me miserable, that would have been a little better; at least it would not have been contempt.” And he turned away from her and sat down at a little table near, and covered his face with his hand. What would everybody think? was Kate’s first thought. Did he mean to hold her up to public notice, to demonstrate that she had used him badly? She bore it for a moment or two in her bewilderment, and then stretched across and touched him lightly with her fan. “Mr Huntley, there are a great many people in the room,” she said. “If we were alone you might reproach me; but surely we need not let these people know--and papa! Mr Huntley, you know very well it was not contempt. Won’t you forgive me--when I ask your pardon with all my heart?” “Forgive you!” cried Fred; and he raised his head and turned to her, though he did not raise his eyes. “You cannot think it is forgiveness that is wanted--that is mockery.” “Please don’t say so! I would not mock you for all the world. Oh, Mr Huntley, if it is not forgiveness, what is it?” cried Kate. And then he looked at her with eyes full of reproach, and a certain appeal--while she met his look with incipient tears, with her child’s gaze of wonder, and sorrow, and eloquent deprecation. “Please forgive me!” she said, in a whisper. She even advanced her hand to him by instinct, with a shy half-conscious movement, stopping short out of regard for the many pairs of eyes in the room, not for any other cause. “I am so very, very sorry,” she said, and the water shone in her blue eyes like dew on flowers. Fred, though he was not emotional, was more deeply moved than he had yet been. Throughout all this strange interview, though he meant every word he said, he had yet been more or less playing a part. But now her ingenuous look overcame him. Something of the imbecility of tenderness came into his eyes. He made a little clutch at the finger-tips which had been held out to him, and would have kissed them before everybody, had not Kate given him a warning look, and blushed, and quickly drawn the half-offered hand away. She would not have drawn it away had they been alone. Would she have heard him more patiently, given him a still kinder response? Fred could not tell, but yet he felt that his first effort had not been made in vain.