And yet with that hint of the social position of the Mullers had come the certainty to her that this marriage could never be.  A shadow had stood suddenly before her—­a boy’s face, the only one before which her calm, complacent soul had ever quailed or shrunk.  The pleasant, apple-cheeked woman, like the rest of us, had her ghost—­her sin unwhipped of justice.  She stood calmly as Mr. Muller hurried his explanations, piling them one on top of the other, but she did not hear a word of them.  If he should ever hear Hugh’s story!  Dead though he was, if that were known not a beggar in the street would marry Catharine.

But since Fanny Guinness was an amiable, pink-cheeked belle in the village choir, she had never turned her back on an enemy:  why should she now?  Hugh Guinness had hated her as the vicious always hate the good, but she was thankful she had smiled and greeted him with Christian forbearance to the very last.  As for this danger coming from him, now that he was dead, the safest way was to drag it to the light at once.  All things worked together for good to those who loved the Lord—­if you managed them right.

“Of course,” she said, as if just finishing a sentence, “you are indifferent to social rank.  And yet it will be no slight advantage to you that Catharine has no swarm of needy kinsfolk.  Her own father died when she was a baby.  Mr. Guinness is the only near friend she has ever known except myself.  He had a son when I married him—­” The boy’s name stuck in her throat.  For a moment she felt as the murderer does, forced to touch his victim with his naked hand.  “Hugh—­Hugh Guinness—­was the lad’s name.”

“I never heard of him,” indifferently.

“No, it is not probable you should.  Long before Berrytown was built he went to Nicaragua.  He died there.  Well,” with a little wave of the hand, “there you have Kitty’s whole family.  It will be better that she should be so untrammeled, for the interests of the school.”

“The school?  I’m not a Reformatory machine altogether, I suppose!” He had been watching Catharine, who was moving about in the shop.  When he was not in sight of her he always remembered that she was a mere child, to be instructed from the very rudiments up after marriage, and that the Guinnesses were ten degrees, at least, below him in the social scale.  But she was near—­she was coming!  The complacent smile went out of his trig little features:  he moved his tongue about to moisten his dry lips before he could speak.  He was absolutely frightened at himself.  “There’s more than the school to be thought of, Mrs. Guinness,” he blurted out.  “I—­I love Catharine.  And I want this matter settled.  Immediately—­within the hour.”

“Very well.  You will be satisfied with the result, I am sure, Mr. Muller.  I give Catharine to you with all my heart.”  But she did not look any more at ease than he.  They both turned to look at Kitty, who came toward them in her usual headlong gait through the shop.