“No,” she said. “You are too kind to find fault; but---- I am sure I never neglect anything you say to me. Tell me what it is--and I--I will not take offence. I will do my very best----” “Oh, how hard it is to make you understand! You put me on a pedestal--whereas it is you who---- Katherine! do you know that you are not a little girl any longer, but a woman, and a--most attractive one? I have struggled against it, knowing that was not the light in which I can have appeared to you, but it’s too strong for me. I have come to tell you of a feeling which has existed for years on my part--and to ask you--if there is any possibility, any hope, to ask you--to marry me----” The poor rector! his voice almost died away in his throat. He put one knee to the ground--not, I need not say, with any prayerful intention, but only to put himself on the same level with her, with his hands on the edge of her table, and gazed into her face. “To---- What did you say, Mr. Stanley?” she asked, with horror in her eyes. “Don’t be hasty, for the sake of heaven! Don’t condemn me unheard. I know all the disparities, all the---- But, Katherine, my love for you is more than all that. I have been trying to keep it down for years. I said, to marry me--to marry me, my dear and only----” “Do you mean that you are on your knees to me, a girl whom you have catechised?” cried Katherine severely, holding her head high. The rector stumbled up in great confusion to his feet. “No, I did not mean that. I was not kneeling to you. I was only---- Oh, Katherine, how small a detail is this! God knows I do not want to make myself absurd in your eyes. I am much older than you are. I am--but your true lover notwithstanding--for years; and your most fond and faithful---- Katherine! if you will be my wife----” “And the mother of Charlotte and Bertie!” said Katherine, looking at him with shining eyes. “Charlotte is a year younger than I am. She comes between Stella and me; and Bertie thinks he is in love with me too. Is it _that_ you come and offer to a girl, Mr. Stanley? Oh, I know. Girls who are governesses and poor have it offered to them and are grateful. But I am as well off as you are. And do you think it likely that I would want to change my age and be my own mother for the sake of--what? Being married? I don’t want to be married. Oh, Mr. Stanley, it is wicked of you to confuse everything--to change all our ways of looking at each other--to----” Katherine almost broke down into a torrent of angry tears, but controlled herself for wrath’s sake.