Catherine seated herself under the trees, and watched in solitude the decline of the sun in a cloudless sky.  The memory of the happy years of her marriage had never been so sadly and persistently present to her mind as at this time, when the choice of another married life waited her decision to become an accomplished fact.  Remembrances of the past, which she had such bitter reason to regret, and forebodings of the future, in which she was more than half inclined to believe, oppressed her at one and the same moment.  She thought of the different circumstances, so widely separated by time, under which Herbert (years ago) and Bennydeck (twenty-four hours since) had each owned his love, and pleaded for an indulgent hearing.  Her mind contrasted the dissimilar results.

Pressed by the faithless man who had so cruelly wronged her in after-years, she only wondered why he had waited so long before h e asked her to marry him.  Addressed with equal ardor by that other man, whose age, whose character, whose modest devotion offered her every assurance of happiness that a woman could desire, she had struggled against herself, and had begged him to give her a day to consider.  That day was now drawing to an end.  As she watched the setting sun, the phantom of her guilty husband darkened the heavenly light; imbittered the distrust of herself which made her afraid to say Yes; and left her helpless before the hesitation which prevented her from saying No.

The figure of a man appeared on the lonely path that led to the lodge gate.

Impulsively she rose from her seat as he advanced.  She sat down again.  After that first act of indecision, the flutter of her spirits abated; she was able to think.

To avoid him, after he had spared her at her own request, would have been an act of ingratitude:  to receive him was to place herself once more in the false position of a woman too undecided to know her own mind.  Forced to choose between these alternatives, her true regard for Bennydeck forbade her to think of herself, and encouraged her to wait for him.  As he came nearer, she saw anxiety in his face and observed an open letter in his hand.  He smiled as he approached her, and asked leave to take a chair at her side.  At the same time, when he perceived that she had noticed his letter, he put it away hurriedly in his pocket.

“I hope nothing has happened to annoy you,” she said.

He smiled again; and asked if she was thinking of his letter.  “It is only a report,” he added, “from my second in command, whom I have left in charge of my Home.  He is an excellent man; but I am afraid his temper is not proof against the ingratitude which we sometimes meet with.  He doesn’t yet make allowances for what even the best natures suffer, under the deteriorating influence of self-distrust and despair.  No, I am not anxious about the results of this case.  I forget all my anxieties (except one) when I am with you.”