When told to take him out his glass of wine, and when conscious that no one followed her, she felt herself to have been guilty of some great sin, and was almost tempted to escape.  She had asked her sister for help; and this was the help that was forth-coming—­help so palpable, so manifest, as to be almost indelicate!  Would he think that plans were being made to catch him, now that he was a captive and impotent?  The thought that it was possible that such an idea might occur to him was terrible to her.  She would rather lose him altogether than feel the stain of such a suggestion on her own conscience.  She put the glass of wine down on the little table by his side, and then attempted to withdraw.

“Stay a moment with me,” he said.  “Where are they all?”

“Mary and your mother are inside.  Harry and Mr. Bates have gone across to look at the horses.”

“I almost feel as though I could walk, too.”

“You must not think of it yet, Mr. Medlicot.  It seems almost a wonder that you shouldn’t have to be in bed, and you with your collar-bone broken only last night!  I don’t know how you can bear it as you do.”

“I shall be so glad I broke it, if one thing will come about.”

“What thing?” asked Kate, blushing.

“Kate—­may I call you Kate?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You know I love you, do you not?  You must know it.  Dearest Kate, can you love me and be my wife?” His left arm was bound up, and was in a sling, but he put out his right hand to take hers, if she would give it to him.  Kate Daly had never had a lover before, and felt the occasion to be trying.  She had no doubt about the matter.  If it were only proper for her to declare herself, she could swear with a safe conscience that she loved him better than all the world.

“Put your hand here, Kate,” he said.

As the request was not exactly for the gift of her hand, she placed it in his.

“May I keep it now?”

She could only whisper something which was quite inaudible, even to him.

“I shall keep it, and think that you are all my own.  Stoop down, Kate, and kiss me, if you love me.”

She hesitated for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts.  She did love him, and was his own; still, to stoop and kiss a man who, if such a thing were to be allowed at all, ought certainly to kiss her!  She did not think she could do that.  But then she was bound to protect him, wounded and broken as he was, from his own imprudence; and if she did not stoop to him, he would rise to her.  She was still in doubt, still standing with her hand in his, half bending over him, but yet half resisting as she bent, when, all suddenly, Harry Heathcote was on the veranda, followed by the two policemen, who had just returned from Boolabong.  She was sure that Harry had seen her, and was by no means sure that she had been quick enough in escaping from her lover’s hand to have been unnoticed by the policemen also.  She fled away as though guilty, and could hardly recover herself sufficiently to assist Mrs. Growler in producing the additional dinner which was required.