I think all the same that Lady Jane was quite right, and that the butterfly kind of man--the gallant, gay Algy or any of his fellows--would have been quite out of Katherine’s way; also that a man like Dr. Burnet would have been much in her way. But to Katherine these calculations seemed all, more or less, insulting. Why an elderly clergyman with a grown-up family should suppose himself to be on an equality with her, a girl of twenty-three, and entitled to make her an offer, so very much at second-hand, of his heart and home, which was too full already; and why, in default of him, a country practitioner with no particular gifts or distinction should be considered the right thing for Katherine, gave her an angry sense of antagonism to the world. This, then, was all she was supposed to be good for--the humdrum country life, the humdrum, useful wife of such a man. And that everything that was pleasant and amusing and extravagant and brilliant should go to Stella: that was the award of the world. Katherine felt very angry as she drove home. She had no inclination towards any “military swell.” She did not admire her brother-in-law nor his kind; she (on the whole) liked Dr. Burnet, and had a great respect for his profession and his much-occupied, laborious, honourable life. But to have herself set down beforehand as a fit mate only for the doctor or the clergyman, this was what annoyed the visionary young person, whose dreams had never been reduced to anything material, except perhaps that vague figure of James Stanford, who was nobody, and whom she scarcely knew!
Yet all this shaking up did Katherine good. If she had been more pleasantly moved she would perhaps scarcely have been so effectually startled out of the deadening routine of her life. The process was not pleasant at all, but it made her blood course more quickly through her veins, and quickened her pulses and cleared her head. She was received by her father without much emotion--with the usual chuckle and “Here you are!” which was his most affectionate greeting.
“Well, so you’ve got home,” he said. “Find home more comfortable on the whole, eh, Katie? Better fires, better cooking, more light, eh? I thought you would. These grand folks, they have to save on something; here you’re stinted in nothing. Makes a difference, I can tell you, in life.”