Kate started. The end of his sentence was a surprise to her. They were walking along side by side now—very slowly—and she looked at him, mute interrogation in her eyes.
“I am too young,” he said. “Your father, you know, was of that opinion from the first.”
“You do not think so?” he said with a droll glance. “Well, I am glad of that. What? You were not going to say that, Miss Bonamy?”
“No,” she answered, blushing. “I was going to say that my father’s opinion might not now be the same, Mr. Lindo.”
“I expect it is. However, the opinion on which I acted was my own. I have a very hasty temper, do you know. This very afternoon I have been quarrelling, and have put my foot into it! I confess I thought when I came here that I could manage. Now I see I am not fit for it—for the living, I mean.”
“Perhaps,” she answered slowly and in a low voice, “you are the more fit because you feel unfit.”
“Well, I do not think I dare act on that,” he cried gaily. “So you now see before you, Miss Bonamy, a very humble personage—a kind of clerical man-of-all-work out of place! You do not know an incumbent of easy temper who wants a curate, do you?”
He spoke lightly, without any air of seeking or posing for admiration. Yet there was a little inflection of bitterness in his voice which did not escape her ear, and perhaps spoke to it—and to her heart—more loudly, because it was not intended for either. She suddenly looked at him, and her face quivered, and then she looked away. But he had seen and understood. He marked the color rising to the roots of her hair, and was as sure as if he had seen them that her eyes were wet with tears.
And then he knew. He felt a sudden answering yearning toward her, a forgetfulness of all her surroundings, and of all his surroundings save herself alone. What a fool, what an ingrate, what a senseless clod he had been, not to have seen months before—when it was in his power to win her, when he might have asked for something besides her pity, when he had something to offer her—that she was the fairest, purest, noblest of women! Now, when it was too late, and he had sacrificed all to a stupid conventionality, a social prejudice—what was her father to her save the natural crabbed foil of her grace and beauty—now he felt that he would give all, only he had nothing to give, to see her wide gray eyes grow dark with tenderness, and—and love.