His voice had gradually grown sterner; and he gently withdrew his hand from her clasp, and rose as a man in a hurry, and pressed with affairs:  “Come, Bram, there is need now of some haste.  The ‘Sea Hound’ has her cargo, and should sail at the noon-tide; and, as for the ’Crowned Bears,’ thou knowest there is much to be said and done.  I hear she left most of her cargo at Perth Amboy.  Well, well, I have told Jerome Brakel what I think of that.  It is his own affair.”

Thus talking, he left the room; and Lysbet instantly began to order the wants of the house with the same air of settled preoccupation.  “Joanna,” she said, “the linen web in the loom, go and see how it is getting on; and the fine napkins must be sent to the lawn for the bleaching, and to-day the chambers must be aired and swept.  The best parlour Katherine will attend to.”

Katherine still sat at the table; her eyes were cast down, and she was arranging—­without a consciousness of doing so—­her bread-crumbs upon her Delft plate.  The directions roused her from her revery, and she comprehended in a moment how decisive her father’s orders were intended to be.  Yet in this matter she was so deeply interested that she instinctively made an appeal against them.

“Mother, my mother, shall I not go once more to see Madam Gordon?  So kind she has been to me!  She will say I am ungrateful, that I am rude, and know not good manners.  And I left there the cushion I am making, and the worsteds.  I may go at once, and bring them home?  Yes, mother, I may go at once.  A young girl does not like to be thought ungrateful and rude.”

“More than that, Katherine; a young girl should not like to disobey a good father.  You make me feel astonished and sorry.  Here is the key of the best parlour; go now, and wash carefully the fine china-ware.  As to the rose-leaves in the big jars, you must not let a drop of water touch them.”

“My cushion and my worsteds, mother!”

“Well, then, I will send Dinorah for them with a civil message.  That will be right.”

So Lysbet turned and left the room.  She did not notice the rebellious look on her daughter’s face, the lowering brows, the resentment in the glance that followed her, the lips firmly set to the mental purpose.  “To see her lover at all risks”—­that was the purpose; but how best to accomplish it, was not clear to her.  The ways of the household were so orderly, so many things brought the family together during the day, Lysbet and Joanna kept such a loving watch over her, the road between their own house and the Semples’ was so straight and unscreened, and she was, beside, such a novice in deception,—­all these circumstances flashing at once across her mind made her, for a moment or two, almost despair.