ent of love approached.

But what kind of love was this coming to Kitty?

He twanged the strings just over her head, to keep her from hearing,
but quite out of tune, he was so agitated with the criticalness of
the moment. But then most moments were critical to Peter Guinness, and
agitation, his wife was wont smilingly to assure him, was his normal
condition.

He anxiously watched Catharine's restless glances into the room where
her mother and the clergyman sat in council. She had guessed their
object then? She was opposed to it?

A thoughtful frown contracted her forehead. Suddenly it cleared:
"Oysters? Yes, it is oysters Jane is broiling. I'm horribly hungry.
I could go round the back way and bring us a little lunch in here,
father. They'll never see us behind the books."

"Shame on you, Kit! You're nothing but a greedy child." But he laughed
with a sudden sense of relief. She really was nothing yet but a
healthy child with a very sharp remembrance of meal-times. It would
be years before her mother or Mr. Muller would talk to her of the
marriage or the work they had planned for her.

"Just as you please," taking up her flannel again. "Very likely it
will be midnight before we have supper: Mr. Muller often forgets
to eat altogether. From what mother tells me, I suppose approving
conscience and a plate of grits now and then carry him through the
day. It's different with me."

"Very different, Kitty. Don't flatter yourself that you will ever be
like him in any way. William Muller is a Christian of the old type.
Though, as for grits, a man should not disregard the requirements of
the stomach too much," with an inward twinge as he smelt the oysters.
He began to play thoughtfully, while Kitty looked again through
the book-shop to the room beyond. The books about her always made
unfamiliar pictures when one looked at them suddenly. They lay now
in such weights of age and mustiness on the floor, the counters, the
beams overhead, the yellow walls of them were lost in such depths of
cobwebs and gloom, that they made a dark retreating frame, in which
she sat like a clear, fine picture in the doorway, the yellow sunset
light behind her. She could see her mother looking in at her, and the
plump, neat little clergyman in his tight-fitting ribbed suit of brown
and spotless shirt-front. He gently stroked his small black imperial
as he talked, but his eyes behind their gold eye-glasses never wavered
in their mild regard of her