Then she went out, for the strain had been hard to bear, and Osborn sat at the table with his hand tightly closed.  He admitted that he had from the beginning been wrong about Kit, but his prejudices were not altogether banished yet.

CHAPTER X

GRACE’S CHOICE

A week after Hallam’s visit, Kit, one afternoon, started for Tarnside.  He had been forced to go to London about some American business, but this was a relief, since it gave him an excuse for delay.  At his interview with Osborn he had left the most important thing unsaid, because it might have jarred Mrs. Osborn, whom he thought his friend, had he asked for Grace at the moment he had put her father in his debt.  In fact, he saw it would be tactful if he waited for some time, but he did not mean to do so.  To some extent, he distrusted Osborn and resolved to make his request before the latter’s gratitude began to cool.  Grace must have full liberty to refuse, but he did not owe her father much.

He wondered how she would choose and his step got slower until he stopped and, sitting on a broken wall, looked up the valley.  The day was calm and the sun shone on smooth pasture and yellow corn.  The becks had shrunk in the shady ghylls and a thin white line was all that marked the fall where the main stream leaped down the Force Crag.  On the steep slopes the heather made purple patches among the bent-grass and Malton moor shone red.  Kit loved the quiet hills; he had known intrigue and adventure and now saw his work waiting in his native dale.  The soil called him; his job was to extend the plow-land and improve his flocks.

This was important, because he could not tell how far Grace would sympathize.  Her father liked the leading place; an effort for display and such luxury as could be cheaply got were the rule at Tarnside.  It was possible that Grace had unconsciously accepted a false standard of values.  Kit might, for her sake, have changed his mode of life, had he thought it good for her, but he did not.  She must have inherited something of Osborn’s tastes and to copy the Tarnside customs might encourage their development.  It was better to remove her from insidious influences to fresh surroundings where she would, so to speak, breath a bracing air.  But this could not be done unless she were willing to go.

Kit knitted his brows as he mused, because there was not much to indicate whether he would find Grace willing or not.  She liked him well enough, but he had not ventured to pose as her lover.  He was too proud and jealous for her; knowing what Osborn thought, he would not involve her in a secret intrigue.  Yet she had been kind and he had now and then got a hint of an elusive tenderness.  Moreover, in her distress, she had come to him.  She was proud and he thought would not have asked his help unless she was willing to give something in return.