ps; then he came suddenly back. "I
wish to express my regret," he began formally, and with his old air of
doing what was required of him as a gentleman, "that I should have
unintentionally done anything to wound--"

"O, better not speak of _that_," interrupted Kitty with bitterness,
"it's all over now." And the final tinge of superiority in his manner
made her give him a little stab of dismissal. "Good by. I see my cousins
coming."

She stood and watched him walk away, the sunlight playing on his figure
through the mantling leaves, till he passed out of the grove.

The cataract roared with a seven-fold tumult in her ears, and danced
before her eyes. All things swam together, as in her blurred sight her
cousins came wavering towards her.

"Where is Mr. Arbuton?" asked Mrs. Ellison.

Kitty threw her arms about the neck of that foolish woman, whoso loving
heart she could not doubt, and clung sobbing to her. "Gone," she said;
and Mrs. Ellison, wise for once, asked no more.

She had the whole story that evening, without asking; and whilst she
raged, she approved of Kitty, and covered her with praises and
condolences.

"Why, of course, Fanny, I didn't care for _knowing_ those people. What
should I want to know them for? But what hurt me was that he should so
postpone me to them, and ignore me before them, and leave me without a
word, then, when I ought to have been everything in the world to him and
first of all. I believe things came to me while I sat there, as they do
to drowning people, all at once, and I saw the whole affair more
distinctly than ever I did. We were too far apart in what we had been
and what we believed in and respected, ever to grow really together. And
if he gave me the highest position in the world, I should have only
that. He never could like the people who had been good to me, and whom I
loved so dearly, and he only could like me as far as he could estrange
me from them. If he could coolly put me aside _now_, how would it be
afterwards with the rest, and with me too? That's what flashed through
me, and I don't believe that getting splendidly married is as good as
being true to the love that came long before, and honestly living your
own life out, without fear or trembling, whatever it is. So perhaps,"
said Kitty, with a fresh burst of tears, "you needn't condole with me so
much, Fanny. Perhaps if you had seen him, you would have thought he was
the one to be pitied. _I_ pitied him, though he _w