Kate looked around; she did not speak; her eyes began to fill. “Isn't it fit for a Dempster's lady?” said Pete, sweeping the whip-handle round the room like a showman. Kate could bear no more. She sank into a chair and burst into a fit of tears. Pete's glowing face dropped in an instant. “Dear heart alive, darling, what is it?” he said. “My poor girl, what's troubling you at all? Tell me, now--tell me, bogh, tell me.” “It's nothing, Pete, nothing. Don't ask me,” said Kate. But still she sobbed as if her heart would break. Pete stood a moment by her side, smoothing her arm with his hand. Then he said, with a crack and a quaver in his great voice, “It _is_ hard for a girl, I know that, to lave father and mother and every one and everything that's been sweet and dear to her since she was a child, and to come to the house of her husband and say, 'The past has been very good to me; but still and for all, I'm for trusting the future to you.' It's hard, darling; I know it's hard.” “Oh, leave me! leave me!” cried Kate, still weeping. Pete brushed his sleeve across his eyes, and said, “Take her upstairs, Mrs. Gorry, while I'm putting up the mare at the 'Saddle.'” Then he whistled to the dog, which had been watching him from the hearthrug, and went out of the house. The handle of the whip dragged after him along the floor. Mrs. Gorry, full of trouble, took Kate to her room. Would she not eat her supper? Then salts were good for headache-should she bring a bottle from her box? After many fruitless inquiries and nervous protestations, the good soul bade Kate good-night and left her. Being alone, Kate broke into yet wilder paroxysms of weeping. The storm-cloud which had been gathering had burst at last. It seemed as if the whole weight of the day had been deferred until then. The piled-up hopes of weeks had waited for that hour, to be cast down in the sight of her own eyes. It was all over. The fight with Fate was done, and the frantic merriment with which she had kept down her sense of the place where the blind struggle had left her made the sick recoil more bitter. She thought of Philip, and her trouble began to moderate. Somewhere out of the uncrushed part of her womanhood there came one flicker of womanly pride to comfort her. She saw Philip at last from the point of revenge. He loved her; he would never cease to love her. Do what he might to banish the thought of her, she would be with him always; the more surely with him, the more reproachfully and unattainably, because she would be the wife of another man. If he could put her away from him in the daytime, and in the presence of those worldly aims for which he had sacrificed her, when night came he would be able to put her away no more. He would never sleep but he would see her. In every dream he would stretch out his arms to her, but she would not be there, and he would awake with sobs and in torment. There was a real joy in this thought, although it tore her heart so terribly.