times that he had met Elizabeth he had learned to understand her a little.  He was quick of apprehension where his prejudices were not concerned, and he certainly had had no opportunity to be prejudiced against Elizabeth as one wanting to lay claim to him.  And he knew better than any one else did how she hated the very thought of the yoke that might be laid upon her.  His thoughts did not dwell upon her, however, for he saw that Katie was like her old affectionate self, that her unjust resentment had been only momentary; it would have been unnatural not to have felt so on that day, he reasoned.  Now she was lovelier than ever, softened; by her suffering, the suffering he was sharing.  He sighed, turned away, looking out of the window doggedly, turned back, and walked quickly up to her.

“How do you do?” he said, holding out his hand.

“How do you do, Stephen,” she answered him, and laying her hand in his, looked into his face a moment, dropped her eyes and stood before him gravely, her color rising a little.  A few trivial questions, a few remarks, a few answers simply given, and he bowed and moved away as her mother brought Edmonson up to her.  He did not see her often now-a-days; there was suffering to them both in meeting, and although he was still her lover in name as well as in heart, it was always with a dread lest the wall should be built up between them, and love be stifled in duty.  He was ashamed of himself for his jealous fears when he saw other men paying her attentions; he never used to have these, but then he was strong to woo her; he could defy his rivals in fair field, and, as it had proved, could win the day.  But now he was maimed in purpose, perhaps his hope was lost, his conscience was not clear in the matter as before, and he felt that in some way he had lost influence.  The strong will that had won Katie was not at present matched by the srong hand that had made her admiring.  The sense of being obliged to wait upon other’s movements galled him; he was impatient, restless, a man who could not find in himself the comfort he sought, but who watched for news from a source that he felt was as ready to bring him death as life.

Elizabeth heard his greeting of Katie, though she was speaking to some one else when he came forward.  She could not tell how it was that in some way she felt through it to its meaning.

“Sir Temple,” she said a moment afterward, “allow me to introduce Major Vaughan; he has been a friend of Colonel Pepperell’s a long time, and though I cannot claim such an acquaintance, I do claim a share in the regard in which all his friends hold him.”

“And he holds it one of the white days of his life on which he first met this fair lady,” gallantly responded Vaughan sweeping around the bow which acknowledged the introduction so that it included the presenter.  Elizabeth smiled her thanks.  She knew that the speech was not meant in sarcasm, although that any one should call it a white day on which he first met her seemed so; it had been a very black day to Stephen Archdale, she remembered.