ver; if she could avoid Bedford for two days, there
would be no more _tete-a-tetes_. Dorothea would be present, Jack, Jim
Blair--all the little world of the station. Jim had promised a truce of
three months. If she could avoid Bedford during that period, her
instinct of loyalty would in some sort be appeased. She had promised
Jim to keep an open mind for three months, and though his doom was
already sealed, she shrank from the thought of putting another man in
his place.

Three months' separation and waiting, and then--

"What are you thinking of?" asked Bedford's voice in her ear. So near
the voice sounded, so low and gentle, that it was almost like the voice
of her own heart, but for all its softness it held an insistence which
compelled an answer. Katrine made a gallant effort at confession.

"I was thinking of the man to whom I am--engaged."

"Virtually engaged!" corrected Bedford quietly. "But they were sad
thoughts to judge by your face. Why should you have sad thoughts of a
good man? It would hurt him to have you think of him so, for of a
certainty his chief thought is for your happiness. Shall we dismiss him
for the moment?--It's lonely for me here by myself, when you wander away
into dreams, and you look so wraith-like and unreal,--a typical spirit
of the mist. If I were an artist I should like to paint you now. I
wonder if you realise how beautiful you are?"

A glow lighted Katrine's eyes; the glow which warms the heart of every
true daughter of Eve who hears herself called fair.

"Am I? I'm glad! I--I think I've grown nicer lately," she replied
ingenuously. "At home no one admired me much; not half, not a quarter
as much as they did Grizel, who is really hardly pretty at all. She
used to laugh at me in the old days and say that I kept my good looks a
secret, while she took people by the throat, and bullied them into
admiration, but the last time she came down she said--?"

"Yes?"

"She said I had grown `unnecessarily good looking!' and wanted to know
`_Why_?' I knew!"

Katrine laughed guiltily. "But I couldn't explain. So I was _cross_."

Bedford looked at her searchingly. For a moment he seemed on the point
of repeating Grizel's question, but he checked himself.

"You shan't be cross, and you shan't be sad, so long as I am here to
manage for you!" he said confidently, and Katrine, looking at his broad
shoulders and grave, purposeful face, felt with a thrill that no harm
could