“Is that so? I thought it represented both honor and profit,” said Harry.
“Oh, it may do! I do not think father cares a button about what honor and profit it possesses. However, I am going to look after father now, and, Kitty, if the circumstances should in the least be a trouble to father, I shall expect you to stand loyally by your father and the family.” With these words he went away, without further courtesies, unless a proud upward toss of his handsome head could be construed into a parting salute.
A few moments of intense silence followed. Katherine’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes cast down. Harry looked anxiously at her. He expected some word, either of self-dependence, or of loyalty to her pledge of a supreme love for himself; but she made neither, and was--Harry considered--altogether unsatisfactory. At this moment he expected words of loving constancy, or at least some assurance of the stability of her affection. On the contrary, her silence and her cold manner, gave him a heart shock. “Kitty! My darling Kitty! did you hear, did you understand, what Dick said, what he meant?”
“He meant, that if my father was hurt, or offended by his removal from his seat in The House, he would make father’s quarrel his own and expect me to do the same.”
“But you would not do such a thing as that?”
“I do not see how I could help it. I love my father. It is beyond words to say how dear he is to me. It would be an impossibility for me to avoid sympathizing with him. Mother and Dick would do the same. Aunt Josepha and even Jane and Ley-land, would make father’s wrong their own; and you must know how Yorkshire families stand together even if the member of it in trouble is unworthy of the least consideration. Remember the Traffords! They were all made poor by Jack, and Jack’s wife, but they would not listen to a word against them. That is _our_ way, you know it. To every Yorkshire man and woman Kindred is Kin, and Love is Love.”
“Perhaps they do, and perhaps they do not. I have never seen anyone put strangers before kindred. I would despise anyone who did such a thing. Yes, indeed, I would!”
“Your father knows how devotedly we love each other, even from our childhood.”
“Well, then, he has always treated our love as a very childish affair. He looks upon me yet, as far too young to even think of marrying. He has been expecting me during this season in London, to meet someone or other by whom I could judge whether my love for you was not a childish imagination. You have known this, Harry, all the time we have been sweethearts. When I was nine, and you were twelve, both father and mother used to laugh at our childish love-making.”