By that strange luck which so often seems to regulate human affairs, Dr. Burnet chose this evening of all others for the explanation of his sentiments. He paid Mr. Tredgold an evening visit, and found him very well; and then he went out to join Katherine, whom he saw walking on the path that edged the cliff. It was a beautiful June evening, serene and sweet, still light with the lingering light of day, though the moon was already high in the sky. There was no reason any longer why Dr. Burnet should restrain his feelings. His patient was well; there was no longer any indecorum, anything inappropriate, in speaking to Katherine of what she must well know was nearest to his heart. He, too, had been conscious of the movement in the air--the magnetic communication from him to her on the day of Mr. Tredgold’s first outing, when they had met the Rector, and he had congratulated them. To Katherine it had seemed almost as if in some way unknown to herself everything had been settled between them, but Dr. Burnet knew different. He knew that nothing had been settled, that no words nor pledge had passed between them; but he had little doubt what the issue would be. He felt that he had the matter in his own hands, that he had only to speak and she to reply. It was a foregone conclusion, nothing wanting but the hand and seal.
Katherine had scarcely got beyond the condition of dreaming in which she had spent the afternoon. She was a little impatient when she saw him approaching. She did not want her thoughts to be disturbed. Her thoughts were more delightful to her than anything else at this moment, and she half resented the appearance of the doctor, whom her mind had forsaken as if he had never been. The dreaming state in which she was, the preoccupation with one individual interest is a cruel condition of mind. At another moment she would have read Dr. Burnet’s meaning in his eyes, and would have been prepared at least for what was coming--she who knew so well what was coming, who had but a few days ago acquiesced in what seemed to be fate. But now, when he began to speak, Katherine was thunderstruck. A sort of rage sprang up in her heart. She endeavoured to stop him, to interrupt the words on his lips, which was not only cruel but disrespectful to a man who was offering her his best, who was laying himself, with a warmth which he had scarcely known to be in him, at her feet. He was surprised at his own ardour, at the fire with which he made his declaration, and so absorbed in that that he did not for the first moment see how with broken exclamations and lifted hands she was keeping him off.