“Who has told you anything about Captain Hyde, father?”

“Many have spoken.”

“Does he get back his good health again?”

“I hear that.  When the warm days come, to England he is going.  So says Jacob Cohen.  What has Mrs. Gordon told thee? for to see her I know thou goes.”

“Twice only have I been.  I heard not of England.”

“But that is certain.  He will go, and what then?  Thee he will quite forget, and never more will thou see or hear tell of him.”

“That I believe not.  In the cold winter one would have said of these flowers, ‘They come no more.’  But the winter goes away, and then here they are.  Richard has been in the dead valley, der shaduwe des doods.  Sometimes I thought, he will come back to me no more.  But now I am sure I shall see him again.”

Joris turned sadly away.  That night he did not speak to her more.  But he had the persistence which is usually associated with slow natures.  He could not despair.  He felt that he must go steadily on trying to move Katherine to what he really believed was her highest interest.  And he permitted nothing to discourage him for very long.  Dominie Van Linden was also a prudent man.  He had no intention in his wooing to make haste and lose speed.  As to Katherine’s love troubles, he had not been left in ignorance of them.  A great many people had given him such information as would enable him to keep his own heart from the wiles of the siren.  He had also a wide knowledge of books and life, and in the light of this knowledge he thought that he could understand her.  But the conclusion that he deliberately came to was, that Katherine had cared neither for Hyde nor Semple, and that the unpleasant termination of their courtship had made her shy of all lover-like attentions.  He believed that if he advanced cautiously to her he might have the felicity of surprising and capturing her virgin affection.  And just about so far does any amount of wisdom and experience help a man in a love perplexity; because every mortal woman is a different woman, and no two can be wooed and won in precisely the same way.

Amid all these different elements, political, social, and domestic, Nature kept her own even, unvarying course.  The gardens grew every day fairer, the air more soft and balmy, the sunshine warmer and more cherishing.  Katherine was not unhappy.  As Hyde grew stronger, he spent his hours in writing long letters to his wife.  He told her every trivial event, he commented on all she told him.  And her letters revealed to him a soul so pure, so true, so loving, that he vowed “he fell in love with her afresh every day of his life.”  Katherine’s communications reached her husband readily by the ordinary post; Hyde’s had to be sent through Mrs. Gordon.  But it was evident from the first that Katherine could not call there for them.  Colonel Gordon would soon have objected to being made an obvious participant in his nephew’s clandestine