distance! No! This was not his
Kate--he understood it all now. It was the spell of the story that still
held her. Richard's voice had upset her, as it had done half the room.

"Yes, it is dreadful for everybody," he added. And then, in a
perfunctory manner, as being perhaps the best way to lead the
conversation into other channels, added: "And the suspense will be worse
now--for me at any rate--for I, too, am going away where letters reach
me but seldom."

Her hand closed convulsively over his.

"You going away! YOU!" she cried in a half-frightened tone. "Oh, please
don't, Uncle George! Oh!--I don't want you away from me! Why must you
go? Oh, no! Not now--not now!"

Her distress was so marked and her voice so pleading that he was about
to tell her the whole story, even to that of the shifts he had been put
to to get food for himself and Todd, when he caught sight of Willits
making his way through the throng to where they sat. His lips closed
tight. This man would always be a barrier between him and the girl he
had loved ever since her babyhood.

"Well, my dear Kate," he replied calmly, his eyes still on Willits, who
in approaching from the other room had been detained by a guest, "you
see I must go. Mr. Pawson wants me out of the way while he fixes up some
of my accounts, and so he suggested that I go back to Wesley for a few
months." He paused for an instant and, still keeping his eye on Willets,
added: "And now one thing more, my dear Kate, before your escort claims
you"--here his voice sank to a whisper--"promise me that if Harry writes
to you you will send him a kind, friendly letter in return. It can do
you no harm now, nor would Harry misunderstand it--your wedding is so
near. A letter would greatly cheer him in his loneliness."

"But he won't write!" she exclaimed with some bitterness--she had
not yet noticed Willits's approach--"he'll never write or speak to me
again."

"But you will if he does?" pleaded St. George, the thought of his boy's
loneliness overmastering every other feeling.

"But he won't, I tell you--never--NEVER!"

"But if he should, my child? If--"

He stopped and raised his head. Willits stood gazing down at them,
searching St. George's face, as if to learn the meaning of the
conference: he knew that he did not favor his suit.

Kate looked up and her face flushed.

"Yes--in one minute, Mr. Willits," and without a word of any kind to
St. George she rose from the sofa and with her a