“I said nothing about any right. You did all settle for me it appears without any will of mine; but I saw on thinking that it was impossible. One has after all to judge for oneself. I don’t suppose that Dr. Burnet would wish a woman to--to marry him--because her friends wished it, Lady Jane.” “He would take you on any terms, Katherine, after all that has come and gone.” “No one shall have me on any terms,” cried Katherine. “It shall be because I wish it myself or not at all.” “You have a great opinion of yourself,” said Lady Jane. “Under such a quiet exterior I never saw a young woman more self-willed. You ought to think of others a little. Dr. Burnet is far the best man you can marry in so many different points of view. Everybody says he has saved your father’s life. He is necessary, quite necessary, to Mr. Tredgold; and how are you to call him in as a doctor after disappointing him so? And then there is Stella. He would have done justice to Stella.” “It will be strange,” cried Katherine, getting up from her seat in her agitation, “if I cannot do justice to Stella without the intervention of Dr. Burnet--or any man!” Lady Jane took this action as a dismissal, and rose up, too, with much solemnity. “You will regret this step you have taken,” she said, “Katherine, not once but all your life.” The only person who did not take a similar view was the Rector, upon whom the news, which of course spread in the same incomprehensible way as his own failure had done, had a very consolatory effect. It restored him, indeed, to much of his original comfort and self-esteem to know that another man had been treated as badly as himself--more badly indeed, for at least there had been no blowing hot and cold with him. He said that Miss Katherine Tredgold was a singular young lady, and evidently, though she had the grace to say little about them, held some of the advanced ideas of the time. “She feels herself called to avenge the wrongs of her sex,” he said with a bitterness which was mitigated by the sense that another man was the present sufferer. But from most of her neighbours she received nothing but disapproval--disapproval which was generally unexpressed in words, for Katherine gave little opening for verbal remonstrance, but was not less apparent for that. Miss Mildmay was, I think, the only one who took approvingly something of the same view. “If she is capricious,” that lady said, “there is plenty of caprice on the other side; loving and riding away and so forth; let them just try how they like it for once! I don’t object to a girl showing a little spirit, and doing to them as others have been done by. It is a very good lesson to the gentlemen.” “Oh, Ruth Mildmay!” said Mrs. Shanks half weeping; “as if it could ever be a good thing to make a man unhappy for life!”