John Law looked at her calmly, but said nothing.  One hand, in a gesture customary with him, flicked lightly at the deep cuff of the other wrist, and this nervous movement was the sole betrayal of his uneasiness.

“You come to this house time and again,” resumed Catharine Knollys, “as though it were an ancient right on your part, as though you had always been a friend of this family.  And yet—­”

“And so I have been,” broke in her suitor.  “My people were friends of yours before we two were born.  Why, then, should you advise your servant, as you have, fairly to deny me admission at the door?”

“I have done ill enough to admit you.  Had I dreamed of this last presumption on your part I should never have seen your face again.”

“’Tis not presumption,” said the young man, his voice low and even, though ringing with the feeling to which even he dared not give full expression.  “I myself might call this presumption in another, but with myself ’tis otherwise.”

“Sir,” said Lady Catharine Knollys, “you speak as one not of good mind.”

“Not of good mind!” broke out John Law.  “Say rather of mind too good to doubt, or dally, or temporize.  Why, ’tis plain as the plan of fate!  It was in the stars that I should come to you.  This face, this form, this heart, this soul—­I shall see nothing else so long as I live!  Oh, I feel myself unworthy; you have right to think me of no station.  Yet some day I shall bring to you all that wealth can buy, all that station can mean.  Catharine—­dear Lady Kitty—­dear Kate—­”

“I like not so fast a soothsaying in any suitor of mine,” replied Lady Catharine, hotly, “and this shall go no further.”  Her hand restrained him.

“Then you find me distasteful?  You would banish me?  I could not learn to endure it!”

Lady Catharine looked at him curiously.  “Actually, sir,” said she, “you cause me to chill.  I could half fear you.  What is in your heart?  Surely, this is a strange love-making.”

“And by that,” cried John Law, “know, then the better of the truth.  Listen!  I know!  And this is what I know—­that I shall succeed, and that I shall love you always!”

“’Tis what one hears often from men, in one form or another,” said the girl, coolly, seating herself as she spoke.

“Talk not to me of other men—­I’ll not brook it!” cried he, advancing toward her a few rapid paces.  “Think you I have no heart?” His eye gleamed, and he came on yet a step in his strange wooing.  “Your face is here, here,” he cried, “deep in my heart!  I must always look upon it, or I am a lost man!”

“’Tis a face not so fair as that,” said the Lady Catharine, demurely.

“’Tis the fairest face in England, or in the world!” cried her lover; and now he was close at her side.  Her hand, she knew not how, rested in his own.  Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young woman’s nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical, almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity and candor.