There was the further sting in all this that, as has been said, nothing had come, nothing probably would ever come, of that talk. Time went on and there was no sign--not so much as a note to say---- What was there to say? Nothing! And yet Katherine had not been able to help a faint expectation that something would come of it. As a matter of fact Stanford came twice to Sliplin with the hope of seeing Katherine again, but he did not venture to go to the house where his visits had been forbidden, and either Katherine did not go out that day or an evil fate directed her footsteps in a different direction. The second time Mr. Tredgold was ill again and nothing could possibly be seen of her. He went to Mrs. Shanks’, whom he knew, but that lady was not encouraging. She told him that Katherine was all but engaged to Dr. Burnet, that he had her father’s life in his hands, and that nothing could exceed his devotion, which Katherine was beginning to return. Mrs. Shanks did not like lovers to be unhappy; if she could have married Katherine to both of them she would have done so; but that being impossible, it was better that the man should be unhappy who was going away, not he who remained. And this was how it was that Katherine saw and heard no more of the man whose sudden appearance had produced so great an effect upon her, and altered at a touch what might have been the current of her life. It was not only Dr. Burnet who avenged his wrongs upon her. Lady Jane came down in full panoply of war to ask what Katherine meant by it. “Yes, you did encourage him,” she said. “I have seen it with my own eyes--if it were no more than that evening at my own house. He asked you to go into the conservatory with him on the most specious pretext, with his intentions as plainly written in his face as ever man’s were. And you went like a lamb, though you must have known----” “But, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “he said nothing to me, whatever his intentions may have been.” “No,” said Lady Jane with a little snort of displeasure; “I suppose you snubbed him when you got him there, and he was frightened to speak. That is exactly what I object to. You have blown hot and blown cold, made him feel quite sure of you, and then knocked him down again like a ninepin. All that may be forgiven if you take a man at the end. But to refuse him when it comes to the point at last, after having played him off and on so long--it is unpardonable, Katherine, unpardonable.” “I am very sorry,” Katherine said, though indeed Lady Jane’s reproaches did not touch her at all. “It is a fact that I might have consented a few days ago; no, not happily, but with a kind of dull acquiescence because everybody expected it.” “Then you allow that everybody had a right to expect it?”