And she left her father’s room thinking within herself that though Lady Jane’s way of recommending a plain man was not pleasant, yet the other way was worse. Fred Turny, it was certain, would not hear of dividing his wife’s fortune with her sister, should her father’s will give it all to herself; neither would Charlie Somers, Lady Jane assured her. Would Dr. Burnet do this? Katherine, possessed for the moment of a prejudice against the doctor, doubted, though that was the ground on which he was recommended. Would any man do so? There was one man she thought (of whom she knew nothing) who would; who cared nothing about the money; whose heart had chosen herself while Stella was there in all her superior attractions. Katherine felt that this man, of whom she had seen so little, who had been out of the country for nearly four years, from whom she had never received a letter, and scarcely even could call to mind anything he had ever said to her, was the one man whom she could trust in all the world. Dr. Burnet came that afternoon, as it was his usual day for visiting Mr. Tredgold. He was very particular in keeping to his days. It was a beautiful spring-like afternoon, and the borders round the house were full of crocuses, yellow and blue and white. The window was open in Katherine’s corner, and all the landscape outside bright with the westering light. “What a difference,” he said, “from that snowstorm--do you remember the snowstorm? It is in this way an era for me--as, indeed, it was in the whole island. We all begin to date by it: before the snowstorm, or at the time of the snowstorm.” “I wonder,” said Katherine, scarcely conscious of what she was saying, “why it was an era to you?” “Ah, that I cannot tell you now. I will, perhaps, if you will let me, sometime. Come out and look at the crocuses. This is just the moment, before the sun goes down.” “Yes, they shut when the sun goes down,” Katherine said, stepping out from the window. The air had all the balm of spring, and the crocuses were all the colours of hope. It is delightful to come out of winter into the first gleam of the reviving year. “We are nothing if not botanical,” said the doctor. “You remember the aloe. It is a fine thing but it is melancholy, for its blossoming is its death. It is like the old fable of the phœnix. When the new comes the old dies. And a very good thing too if we did not put our ridiculous human sentiment into everything.” “Do you think human sentiment is ridiculous?” said Katherine, half disposed to back him up, half to argue it out. “Of course I don’t!” said the doctor with vehemence; and then he laughed and said, “We are talking like a book. But I am glad you went to Steephill; there is not any such sentiment there.” “Do you think, then, I am liable to be attacked by fits of sentiment? I don’t think so,” she said, and then she invited the doctor to leave the crocuses and to come in to tea.