“Not any more than I shall miss him,” he rejoined sadly; “but he has lost almost everything he had in the bank failure and I cannot have him support me any longer--so I am going to sea.”
Kate started forward and laid her hand on his wrist: “To sea!--in a ship! Where?” The inquiry came with such suddenness and with so keen a note of pain in her voice that Harry's heart gave a bound. It was not St. George's losses then she was thinking of--she was thinking of him! He raised his eyes quickly and studied her face the closer; then his heart sank again. No!--he was wrong--there was only wonder in her gaze; only her usual curiosity to know every detail of what was going on around her.
With a sigh he resumed his bent position, talking to the end of his walking-stick tracing figures in the gravel: “I shall go to Rio, probably,” he continued in the same despondent tone--“or China. That's why I called after you. I sail day after to-morrow--Saturday at the latest--and it may be a good many years before I get back again, and so I didn't want to go, Kate, without telling you that--that--I forgive you for everything you have done to me--and whether you forgive me or not, I have kept my promises to you, and I will always keep them as long as I live.”
“What does dear Uncle George think of it?” She too was addressing the end of the stick; gaining time to make up her mind what to do and say. The old wound, of course, could not be opened, but she might save him and herself from fresh ones.
“He doesn't know I am going; nobody knows but you. I have been a curse to every one who has been kind to me, and I am going now where there will be nobody but strangers about me. To leave Uncle George breaks my heart, but so does it break my heart to leave my precious mother and dear old Alec, who cries all the time and has now taken to his bed, I hear.”
She waited, but her name was not added to the list, nor did he raise his head.
“I deserve it all, I suspect,” he went on, “or it wouldn't be sent to me; but it's over now. If I ever come back it will be when I am satisfied with myself; if I never come back, why then my former hard luck has followed me--that's all. And now may I talk to you, Kate, as I used to do sometimes?” He straightened up, threw down his cane, and turned his shoulders so he could look her squarely in the eyes. “If I say anything that offends you you can get up and walk away and I won't follow you, nor will I add another word. You may never see me again, and if it is not what I ought to say, you can forget it all when I am gone. Kate!”--he paused, and for a moment it was all he could do to control himself. “What I want to tell you first is this--that I haven't had a happy day or hour since that night on the stairs in my father's house. Whether I was right or wrong I don't know; what followed is what I couldn't help, but that part I don't regret, and if any one should behave to you as Willits did I would do it over again. What I do regret is the pain it has caused you. And now here comes this awful sorrow to Uncle George, and I am the cause of that too.”