[Illustration:  He took her in his arms]

“My darling, my charmer,” he said, “how you have tortured me!  By my soul, I have been almost distracted.  Pray, now let me see thy lovely face.”  He lifted it in his hands and kissed it again,—­kissed the rosy cheeks, and white dropped eyelids, and red smiling mouth; vowed with every kiss that she was the most adorable of women, and protested, “on his honour as a soldier,” that he would make her his wife, or die a bachelor for her sake.

And who can blame a young girl if she listens and believes, when listening and believing mean to her perfect happiness?  Not women who have ever stood, trembling with love and joy, close to the dear one’s heart.  If they be gray-haired, and on the very shoal of life, they must remember still those moments of delight,—­the little lane, the fire-lit room, the drifting boat, that is linked with them.  If they be young and lovely, and have but to say, “It was yesterday,” or, “It was last week,” still better they will understand the temptation that was too great for Katherine to overcome.

And, as yet, nothing definite had been said to her about Neil Semple, and the arrangement made for her future.  Joris had intended every day to tell her, and every day his heart had failed him.  He felt as if the entire acceptance of the position would be giving his little daughter away.  As long as she was not formally betrothed, she was all his own; and Neil could not use that objectionable word “my” in regard to her.  Lysbet was still more averse to a decisive step.  She had had “dreams” and “presentiments” of unusual honour for Katherine, which she kept with a superstitious reverence in her memory; and the girl’s great beauty and winning manners had fed this latent expectancy.  But to see her the wife of Neil Semple did not seem to be any realization of her ambitious hopes.  She had known Neil all his life; and she could not help feeling, that, if Katherine’s fortune lay with him, her loving dreams were all illusions and doomed to disappointment.

Besides, with a natural contradiction, she was a little angry at Neil’s behaviour.  He had been coming to their house constantly for a month at least; every opportunity of speaking to Katherine on his own behalf had been given him, and he had not spoken.  He was too indifferent, or he was too confident; and either feeling she resented.  But she judged Neil wrongly.  He was an exceedingly cautious young man; and he felt what the mother could not perceive,—­a certain atmosphere about the charming girl which was a continual repression to him.  In the end, he determined to win her, win her entirely, heart and hand; therefore he did not wish to embarrass his subsequent wooing by having to surmount at the outset the barrier of a premature “no.”  And, as yet, his jealousy of Captain Hyde was superficial and intermitting; it had not entered his mind that an English officer could possibly be an actual rival to him.  They were all of them notoriously light of love, and the Colonial beauties treated their homage with as light a belief; only it angered and pained him that Katherine should suffer herself to be made the pastime of Hyde’s idle hours.