On Saturdays, during the summer, Miss O'Neill caught butterflies, and in the winter played golf. On Sunday morning she went to church. On Sunday afternoons and evenings she had something very nearly approaching a salon. On these latter occasions Mrs. Craven flattered herself that she brought success by her artistic attention to the commissariat.
Now, the girl was attractive to men, and although she was emphatically a girl's girl, still she had as many friends of one sex as the other. She was good-looking, she was amusing, she was always well turned out, and she carried about with her that indescribable charm (above and beyond these other matters) which always makes people desirous of warming up a first acquaintance into intimacy.
To one man only had she shown any special degree of preference, and he was enough encouraged thereby to propose marriage to her.
"I am not absolutely certain that I wish to be married just yet," she told him, "but I am going abroad now, and I will let you know definitely when I return. Those are not nice terms, but they are the best I can offer. I have always been able to give a 'yes' or 'no' decision on every other matter in life so far. But here I can't. It is weak of me. Perhaps it is merely womanly."
"You are exquisite in your womanliness, as you are exquisite in everything else," he had replied. "I am grateful for any bone of comfort you throw me, Kitty dear."
She was going away then to West Africa, as has been related above, and the man saw her off from the landing stage. She returned the waving of his handkerchief. "Now, if you had abused me for my indecision, and said you would either be engaged or not engaged, I believe I'd have married you out of hand if you'd wanted me. But you didn't seem able to clinch things, and so anyhow you're pigeon-holed for the present. I'm glad I made you keep our little matter secret."
The man's name was Austin. Many times during the voyage south through the Bay, and down the Trades from the Islands, Kate told herself she ought to announce the fact that she was engaged. But on every occasion her femininity got up in arms. "Certainly not," said this intangible force. "Mr. Austin is a man, and if he cares to be a man and gossip, why let him. But a woman by reason of her sex is not called upon to say more than she needs." So Kate held her tongue, and regretted more and more every day that--well--that she should have cause for regrets.