e didn't want me to do! and he has no right to--Oh,
Uncle George, it's--"

St. George leaned nearer and covered her limp fingers with his own
tender grasp.

"Try him once more, Kate. Let me send him to you. It will be all over
in a minute and you will be so happy--both of you! Nothing like making
up--it really pays for the pain of a quarrel."

The outside door shut gently and there was a slight movement in the hall
behind them, but neither of them noticed it. Kate sat with her head up,
her mind at work, her eyes watching the firelight. It was her future she
was looking into. She had positive, fixed ideas of what her station in
life as a married woman should be;--not what her own or Harry's birth
and position could bring her. With that will-o'-the-wisp she had no
sympathy. Her grandfather in his early days had been a plain, seafaring
man even if his ancestry did go back to the time of James I, and her
mother had been a lady, and that too without the admixture of a single
drop of the blood of any Kennedy Square aristocrat. That Harry was
well born and well bred was as it should be, but there was something
more;--the man himself. That was why she hesitated. Yes--it WOULD "all
be over in a minute," just as Uncle George said, but when would the
next break come? And then again there was her mother's life with all the
misery that a broken promise had caused her. Uncle George was not the
only young gallant who had been put to bed in her grandfather's house.
Her mother had loved too--just as much as she loved Harry--loved with
her whole soul--until grandpa Barkeley put his foot down.

St. George waited in silence as he read her mind. Breaches between
most of the boys and girls were easily patched up--a hearty cry, an
outstretched hand--"I am so sorry," and they were in each other's arms.
Not so with Kate. Her reason, as well as her heart, had to be satisfied.
This was one of the things that made her different from all the other
girls about her, and this too was what had given her first place in
the affections and respect of all who knew her. Her heart he saw was
uppermost to-night, but reason still lurked in the background.

"What do you think made him do it again?" she murmured at last in a
voice barely audible, her fingers tightening in his palm. "He knows how
I suffer and he knows too WHY I suffer. Oh, Uncle George!--won't you
please talk to him! I love him so, and I can't marry him if he's like
this. I can't!--_I_ CAN'T