“Why, Catharine!” He held her hand, patting it between his own, which were warm and moist.  “I really could not deny myself a glimpse of you, though I was sent on an errand by Maria to the station.  But all roads end for me in the Book-shop.  That is natural—­he! he!”

“Yes, it is natural.”

“It must be only a glimpse, though.  I begged of Jane a cup of hot tea, to take off the chill of this morning air.  Ah, here it is:  thank you, my good girl.  Only a glimpse, for Maria’s business was urgent:  Maria’s business always is urgent.  But I was to intercept Doctor McCall on his way to the cars.”

“Is he going this morning?”

“Yes.  Not to return, it appears.”

“Not to return?” Her voice seemed hardly to have the energy of a question in it.

“But I,” with a shrug and significant laugh, “am not to allow him to go.  Behold in me an emissary of Love!  You; would not have suspected a Mercury in your William, Catharine?” Within the last month he had begun to talk down in this fashion to her, accommodating himself to her childish tastes.

“What is Mercury’s errand?”

“Aha! you curious little puss!  How a woman does prick her ears at the mention of a love-story!  Though, I suppose, this one is wellnigh its end.  Maria made no secret of it.  Doctor McCall, I inferred from what she said, had been pouring out his troubles in her ear, and she sent me to bring him back to her with the message that she had found a way of escape from them.  Eh?  Did you speak?  You did not know what, dear?”

“I did not know that Maria had the right to bring him back.  They are—­”

“Engaged?  Oh, certainly.  At least—­It is an old attachment, and Maria is such a woman to manage, you know!  Is that the tea-pot, Jane?  Just fill my cup again.  Oh yes, I suppose it is all settled.”

Catharine was standing by the window.  The wind blew in chilly and strong, while Mr. Muller behind her sipped his tea and ambled in his talk.  Crossing the meadow, going down the road, she saw the large figure of a man in a loose light overcoat, who swung in his gait and carried his hat in his hand as a boy would do.  Even if he had loved her, she could not, like Maria, have gone a step to meet him, nor intoned the Song of Solomon.  But he did not love her.

She turned to her companion:  “There is something I wished to say.”

“In one moment, my dear.”  He was sweetening his tea.  Hanging the silver tongs on the lid, he looked up:  “Good God, Catharine! what is it?”

“I wished to tell you—­no, don’t touch me, please—­this is a mistake which we have made, and it is better to let it go no farther.  It ought to end now.”

“End?  Now?” But he was not surprised.  The pale face staring at her over the half-emptied cup looked as if it had been waiting to hear this; so that they began the subject, as it were, in the middle.  So much had already been said between them without words.  He set the cup down, even in that moment folding his napkin neatly with shaking fingers.  Kitty did not laugh.  She never laughed at him afterward.  Something in that large, loose figure yonder, going away from her to the woman he loved, had whetted her eyesight and her judgment.  She saw the man at last under Muller’s weak finical ways, and the manly look he gave her.