XIV.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments:  love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.”

In some respects, the pedler’s anticipations were correct.  Katherine had “a bad time by herself” that night; for evil has this woful prerogative,—­it can wound the good and the innocent, it can make wretched without provocation and without desert.  But, whatever her suffering, it was altogether her own.  She made no complaint, and she offered no explanation of her singular conduct.  Her household, however, had learned to trust her; and the men and women servants sitting around the kitchen-fire that night, talked over the circumstance, and found its very mystery a greater charm than any possible certainty, however terrible, could have given them.

“She be a stout-hearted one,” said the ostler admiringly.  “Tony and I a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates.  With his bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours; and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her eyes a-shining like candles.”

“It would be about the captain he spoke.”

The remark was ventured by Lettice in a low voice, and the company looked at each other and nodded confidentially.  For the captain was a person of great and mysterious importance in the house.  All that was done was in obedience to some order received from him.  Katherine quoted him continually, granted every favour in his name, made him the authority for every change necessary.  His visits were times of holiday, when discipline was relaxed, and the methodical economy of life at the manor house changed into festival.  And Hyde had precisely that dashing manner, that mixture of frankness and authority, which dependents admire.  The one place in the whole world where nobody would have believed wrong of Hyde was in Hyde’s own home.

And yet Katherine, in the secrecy of her chamber, felt her heart quake.  She had refused to think of the circumstance until after she had made a pretence of eating her supper, and had seen little Joris asleep, and dismissed Lettice, with all her accustomed deliberation and order.  But, oh, how gratefully she turned the key of her room!  How glad she felt to be alone with the fear and the sorrow that had come to her!  For she wanted to face it honestly; and as she stood with eyes cast down, and hands clasped behind her back, the calm, resolute spirit of her fathers gathered in her heart, and gave an air of sorrowful purpose to her face and attitude.  At that hour she was singularly like Joris Van Heemskirk; and any one familiar with the councillor would have known Katherine to be his daughter.