As this was done and he turned fully to Katie again, a new mood, the effect of her sudden indifference, came over him.  A few moments ago she had been almost fond, now she was languidly polite.  Hope faded away from all points of his horizon.  An easterly mist of doubt was creeping over him.  His egotism at its height was only a mild satisfaction in his social impregnability and was readily overpowered by the recollection of personal defects to which he was acutely alive.  In the atmosphere of Katie’s coolness, he forgot his earldom and thought disconsolately of his nose.  He was disconcerted, and after a few embarrassed words took his leave.  It never occurred to him as a consolation that his tones and glances were growing a little too loverlike to be safely on exhibition before Elizabeth who had not noticed them in the moments that Bulchester had forgotten his caution, but who, as Katie knew, might wake up to the fact at any glance.  Elizabeth bade him farewell kindly, she pitied his disappointment, and thought that he bore it well.  But as she watched his half-timorous movements, she believed that even had her own marriage ceremony turned out to be a reality.  Lord Bulchester would have had no chance with a girl who had been loved by Stephen Archdale whose wooing was as full of intrepidity as his other acts.

“Well!  What are you thinking of?” asked Katie meeting her earnest gaze.

“Do you want me to tell you?”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering why you tortured him.  Why don’t you send him away at once, and forever?”

Katie laughed unaimiably.  “He seems to like the torturing,” she said.  Then she looked at Elizabeth in a teasing way.  “Some girls would prefer him to Stephen, you know,” she added.

“You mean because he has a title?  You can’t think of any other reason.”

“Oh, of course I don’t, my Archdale champion.  How strange that you trust me so little, Elizabeth!”

“Trust you so little, Katie?  Why, if any other girl did as you are doing, I should say she was playing false with her betrothed, and meant to throw him over.  I never imagine such a thing of you.  I only feel that you are very cruel to Lord Bulchester.”

Katie cast down her eyes for a moment.  “Some things are beyond our control,” she answered.

“Not things like these,” said Elizabeth.  “Since you have suffered yourself, I don’t understand why you want to make other people suffer.”

“Don’t you?” returned the girl.  “That’s just the reason, I suppose.  Why should I be alone?  But I shall be done with playing by and by, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, I know, Katie,” the girl answered.  “I trust you.”

Again Katie looked down for a moment, looked up again, this time into the face of her friend, and sighed lightly.  “Don’t think me better than I am, Betsey,” she implored, the dimples about her mouth effectually counteracting the pathos of her tones.  And at the words she put up her lips with a childlike air to her companion.  Elizabeth’s arms folded impulsively about her, and held her for a moment in an embrace that seemed at once to guard, and caress, and brood over her.  Then she drew away, and sat beside her with a quietness that seemed like a wish to make her sudden evidence of strong feeling forgotten.