While he was speaking, Neil left the room.  The little argument struck him as a pretext and a cover, and he was glad to escape from a position which he felt to be both painful and humiliating.  He was in a measure Captain Hyde’s host, and subject to traditions regarding the duties of that character; any display of anger would be derogatory to him, and yet how difficult was restraint!  So his father’s interference was a welcome one; and he was reconciled to his own disappointment, when, looking back, he saw the old gentleman slowly taking the road to Van Heemskirk’s with the pretty girls in their quilted red hoods, one on each side of him.

The elder was very polite to his charges; he never once regretted to them the loss of his pipe, and chat with Colonel Gordon.  But he noticed that Katherine was silent and disappointed, and that she lingered in her own room after her arrival at home.  Her subsequent pretty cheerfulness, her delight in her lilies, her confiding claims upon her father’s love,—­nothing in these things deceived him.  He saw beneath all the fluttering young heart, trembling, and yet happy in the new, sweet feeling, never felt before, which had come to it that afternoon.

But he thought that most girls had to have this initiative:  it prepared the way for a soberer and more lasting affection.  In the end, Katherine would perceive how imprudent, how impossible, a marriage with Captain Hyde must be; and her heart would turn back to Neil, who had been her lover from boyhood.  Yet he reflected, it would be well to have the matter understood, and to give it that “possibility” which is best attained on a money basis.

So while he and the Van Heemskirks discussed the matter,—­a little reluctantly, he thought, on their part,—­Katherine talked with Joanna of the Gordons.  Her heart was so full of her lover, that it was a relief to discuss the people and things nearest to him.  And her very repression excited her.  She toyed with her cambric kerchief before the small looking-glass, and imitated the fashionable English lady with a piquant cleverness that provoked low peals of laughter, and a retrospective discussion of the evening, which was merry enough, without being in the least ill-natured.

But, oh, in what strange solitudes every separate soul dwells!  When Katherine kissed her sister, and said simperingly, with the highest English accent, “La, child, I protest it has been the most agreeable evening,” Joanna had not a suspicion of the joy and danger that had come to the dear little one at her side.  She was laughing softly with her, even while the fearful father stood at the closed door, and lifted up his tender soul in that pathetic petition, “Ach, mijn kind! mijn kind! mijn liefste kind! Almighty God preserve thee from all sin and sorrow!”

[Illustration:  Tail-piece]

[Illustration:  Chapter heading]

III.