ging clear.
"Every day I lose is just so much taken from a decent, independent
life."

A sudden revulsion of feeling swept through her. This was the last thing
she had expected from Harry. What had come over him that he should deny
her anything?--he who had always obeyed her slightest wish. Then a new
thought entered her head--why should she humble herself to ask any more
questions? With a quick movement she gained her feet and stood toying
with her dress, arranging the lace scarf about her throat, tightening
the wide strings that held her teacup of a bonnet close to her face. She
raised her eyes and stole a glance at him. The lips were still firmly
set with the resolve that had tightened them, but his eyes were brimming
tears.

As suddenly as her pride had risen did it die out. All the tenderness of
her nature welled up. She made one step in his direction. She was about
to speak, but he had not moved, nor did his face relax. She saw that
nothing could shake his resolve; they were as far apart as if the seas
already rolled between them. She held out her hand, and with that same
note of infinite pathos which he knew so well when she spoke straight
from her heart, said as she laid her fingers in his:

"Good-by, and God bless you, Harry."

"Good-by, Kate," he murmured in barely audible tones. "May I--may
I--kiss you on the forehead, as I always used to do when I left you--"

She bent her head: he leaned over and touched the spot with his lips as
reverently as a sinner kisses the garment of a saint, then, choking down
her tears, all her body unstrung, her mind in a whirl, she turned and
passed out of the park.

That same afternoon Kate called her father into her little sitting-room
at the top of the stairs and shut the door.

"Harry Rutter is going to sea as a common sailor on one of the ships
leaving here in a couple of days. Can you find out which one?--it may be
one of your own." He was still perfunctory agent of the line.

"Young Rutter going to sea!"--the nomenclature of "my dear Harry" had
ended since the colonel had disinherited him. "Well--that is news! I
suspect that will be the best place for him; then if he plays any of his
pranks there will be somebody around with a cat-o'-nine-tails to take it
out of him. Going to sea, is he?"

Kate looked at him with lowered lids, her lips curling slightly, but
she did not defend the culprit. It was only one of what Prim called his
"jokes:" he was the last man in