"Oh, I don't know--I couldn't love him--that's all. He has many excellent qualities--too many maybe," and she smiled faintly. "You know I never liked people who were too good--that is, too willing to do everything you wanted them to do--especially men who ought really to be masters and--" She stopped and played with the top of her parasol, smoothing the k.n.o.b with her palm as if the better to straighten out the tangle in her mind. "I expect you will think me queer, Uncle George, but I have come to the conclusion that I will never love anybody again--I am through with all that. It's very hard, you know, to mend a thing when it's broken. I used to say to myself that when I grew to be a woman I supposed I would love as any other woman seemed content to love; that no romance of a young girl was ever realized and that they could only be found in love stories. But my theories all went to pieces when I heard Mr. Horn that night. Dot's love for John the Carrier--I have read it so often since that I know the whole story by heart--Dot's love for John was the real thing, but May Fielding's love for Tackleton wasn't. And it seemed so wonderful when her lover came home and--it's foolish, I know--very silly--that I should have been so moved by just the reading of a story--but it's true. It takes only a very little to push you over when you are on the edge, and I had been on the edge for a long time.

But don't let us talk about it, dear Uncle George," she added with a forced smile. "I'm going to take care of you now and be a charming old maid with side curls and spectacles and make flannel things for the poor--you just wait and see what a comfort I will be." Her lips were trembling, the tears crowding over the edges of her lids.

St. George stretched out his hand and in his kindest voice said:

"Was it the carrier and his wife, or was it the sailor boy who came back so fine and strong, that affected you, Kate?--and made you give up Mr.

Willits?" He would go to the bottom now.

"It was everything, Uncle George--the sweetness of it all--her pride in her husband--his doubts of her--her repentance; and yet she did what she thought was for the best; and then his forgiveness and the way he wanted to take her in his arms at last and she would not until she explained.

And there was nothing really to explain--only love, and trust, and truth--all the time believing in him--loving him. Oh, it is cruel to part people--it's so mean and despicable! There are so many Tackletons--and the May Fieldings go to the altar and so on to their graves--and there is often such a very little difference between the two. I never gave my promise to Mr. Willits. I would not!--I could not!

He kept hoping and waiting. He was very gentle and patient--he never coaxed nor pleaded, but just--Oh, Uncle George!--let me talk it all out--I have n.o.body else. I missed you so, and there was no one who could understand, and you wouldn't answer my letters." She was crying softly to herself, her beautiful head resting on her elbow pillowed on the back of his chair.

He leaned forward the closer: he loved this girl next best to Harry. Her sorrows were his own. Was it all coming out as he had hoped and prayed for? He could hardly restrain himself in his eagerness.

"Did you miss anybody else, Kate?" There was a peculiar tenderness in his voice.

She did not raise her head nor did she answer. St. George waited and repeated the question, Slipping his hand over hers, as he spoke.

"It was the loneliness, Uncle George," she replied, evading his inference. "I tried to forget it all, and I threw open our house and gave parties and dances--hardly a week but there has been something going on--but nothing did any good. I have been--yes--wretchedly unhappy and--No, it will only distress you to hear it--don't let's talk any more about it. I won't let you go away again. I'll go away with you if you don't get better soon, anywhere you say. We'll go down to the White Sulphur--Yes--we'll go there. The air is so bracing--it wouldn't be a week before all the color would come back to your cheeks and you be as strong as ever."

He was not listening. His mind was framing a question--one he must ask without committing himself or her. He was running a parallel, really--reading her heart by a flank movement.

"Kate, dear?" He had regained his position although he still kept hold of her hand.

"Yes, Uncle George."

"Did you write to Harry, as I asked you?"

"No, it wouldn't have done any good. I have had troubles enough of my own without adding any to his."

"Were you afraid he would not answer it?"

She lifted her head and tightened her fingers about his own, her wet eyes looking into his.

"I was afraid of myself. I have never known my own mind and I don't know it now. I have played fast and loose with everybody--I can't bind up a broken arm and then break it again."

"Wouldn't it be better to try?" he said softly.

"No, I don't think so."

St. George released her hand and settled back in his chair; his face grew grave. What manner of woman was this, and how could he reach the inner kernel of her heart? Again he raised his head and leaning forward took both her hands between his own.

"I am going to tell you a story, Kate--one you have never heard--not all of it. When I was about your age--a little older perhaps, I gave my heart to a woman who had known me from a boy; with whom I had played when she was a child. I'm not going into the whole story, such things are always sad; nor will I tell you anything of the beginning of the three happy months of our betrothal nor of what caused our separation.

I shall only tell you of the cruelty of the end. There was a misunderstanding--a quarrel--I begging her forgiveness on my knees. All the time her heart was breaking. One little word from her would have healed everything. Some years after that she married and her life still goes on. I am what you see."

Kate looked at him with swimming eyes. She dimly remembered that she had heard that her uncle had had a love affair in his youth and that his sweetheart had jilted him for a richer man, but she had never known that he had suffered so bitterly over it. Her heart went out to him all the more.

"Will you tell me who it was?" She had no right to ask; but she might comfort him the better if she knew.

"Harry's mother."

Kate dropped his hands and drew back in her seat.

"You--loved--Mrs.--Rutter--and she--refused you for--Oh!--what a cruel thing to do! And what a fool she was. Now I know why you have been so good to Harry. Oh, you poor, dear Uncle George. Oh, to think that you of all men! Is there any one whose heart is not bruised and broken?" she added in a helpless tone.

"Plenty of them, Kate--especially those who have been willing to stoop a little and so triumph. Harry has waited three years for some word from you; he has not asked for it, for he believes you have forgotten him; and then he was too much of a man to encroach upon another's rights.

Does your breaking off with Mr. Willits alter the case in any way?--does it make any difference? Is this sailor boy always to be a wanderer--never to come home to his people and the woman he loves?"

"He'll never come back to me, Uncle George," she said with a shudder, dropping her eyes. "I found that out the day we talked together in the park, just before he left. And he's not coming home. Father got a letter from one of his agents who had seen him. He was looking very well and was going up into the mountains--I wrote you about it. I am sorry you didn't get the letter--but of course he has written you too."

"Suppose I should tell you that he would come back if he thought you would be glad to see him--glad in the old way?"

Kate shook her head: "He would never come. He hates me, and I don't blame him. I hate myself when I think of it all."

"But if he should walk in now?"--he was very much afraid he would, and he was not quite ready for him yet. What he was trying to find out was not whether Kate would be glad to see Harry as a relief to her loneliness, but whether she really LOVED him.

Some tone in his voice caught her ear. She turned her head quickly and looked at him with wondering gaze, as if she would read his inmost thoughts.

"You mean that he is coming, Uncle George--that Harry IS coming home!"

she exclaimed excitedly, the color ebbing from her cheeks.

"He is already here, Kate. He slept upstairs in his old room last night.

I expect him in any minute."

"Here!--in this room!" She was on her feet in an instant, her face deathly pale, her whole frame shaking. Which way should she turn to escape? To meet him face to face would bring only excruciating pain.

"Oh, why didn't you tell me, Uncle George!" she burst out. "I won't see him! I can't!--not now--not here! Let me go home--let me think!

No--don't stop me!" and catching up her cape and parasol she was out the door and down the steps before he could call her back or even realize that she had gone.

Once on the pavement she looked nervously up and down the street, gathered her pretty skirts tight in her hand and with the fluttered flight of a scared bird darted across the park, dashed through her swinging gate, and so on up to her bedroom.

There she buried her face in Mammy Henny's lap and burst into an agony of tears.

While all this had been going on upstairs another equally important conference was taking place in Pawson's office below, where Harry at Pawson's request had gone to meet Gadgem and talk over certain plans for his uncle's future welfare. He had missed Kate by one of those trifling accidents which often determine the destiny of nations and of men. Had he, after attending to the business of the morning--(he had been down to Marsh Market with Todd for supplies)--mounted the steps to see his uncle instead of yielding to a sudden impulse to interview Pawson first and his uncle afterward, he would have come upon Kate at the very moment she was pouring out her heart to St. George.

But no such fatality or stroke of good fortune--whatever the G.o.ds had in store for him--took place. On the contrary he proceeded calmly to carry out the details of a matter of the utmost importance to all concerned--one in which both Pawson and Gadgem were interested--(indeed he had come at Pawson's suggestion to discuss its details with the collector and himself):--all of which the Scribe promises in all honor to reveal to his readers before the whole of this story is told.

Harry walked straight up to Gadgem:

"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gadgem," he said in his manly, friendly way. "You have been very good to my uncle, and I want to thank you both for him and for myself," and he shook the little man's hand heartily.

Gadgem blushed. St. George's democracy he could understand; but why this aristocrat--outcast as he had once been, but now again in favor--why this young prince, the heir to Moorlands and the first young blood of his time, should treat him as an equal, puzzled him; and yet, somehow, his heart warmed to him as he read his sincerity in his eyes and voice.

"Thank you, sir--thank you very much, sir," rejoined Gadgem, with a folding-camp-stool-movement, his back bent at right angles with his legs. "I really don't deserve it, sir. Mr. Temple is an EXtraordinary man, sir; the most EXtraordinary man I have ever met, sir. Give you the shirt off his back, sir, and go NAked himself."

"Yes, he gave it to me," laughed Harry, greatly amused at the collector's effusive manner: He had never seen this side of Gadgem.

"That, of course, you know all about--you paid the bills, I believe."

"PREcisely so, sir." He had lengthened out now with a spiral-spring, cork-screw twist in his body, his index finger serving as point. "Paid every one of them. He never cared, sir--he GLOried in it--GLOried in being a pauper. UNaccountable, Mr. Rutter--Enormously unaccountable.

Never heard of such a case; never WILL hear of such a case. So what was to be done, sir? Just what I may state is being done this minute over our heads UPstairs": and out went the index finger. "Rest and REcuperation, sir--a slow--a very slow use of AVAILable a.s.sets until new and FURther AVAILable a.s.sets could become visible. And they are here, sir--have arRIVED. You may have heard, of course, of the Patapsco where Mr. Temple kept the largest part of his fortune."