to see except "Good evening, Miss Kittie,"
when he came, and when he left.

No one, except his own sister, suspected in the least that anything took
him there save a desire to accompany Pansy, whose absorbing devotion
everyone in Canfield knew by this time.

Mr. Murray was quick to see that in the mother's eyes, Kittie and Kat
were the merest children, and that a thought of any other kind in
connection with them, would not be harbored for an instant; and he also
saw, that never a girlish heart was freer from anything of loves or
lovers, than Kittie's, and so long as it was so, he was quite content to
let it remain, and watch it grow to maturity. There was no denying that
he was strangely and powerfully interested in her, wonder and laugh at
the idea, as he would, though he could not yet think that the feeling
had assumed the name of love. It was only that respect and interest that
comes to the heart of man when he meets a woman, lovely, fresh-hearted,
and unselfishly sweet.

The approaching dignity of sixteen lay over the girls, and while Kat was
still a most thoroughly romping tom-boy, Kittie was wonderfully womanly,
with pretty, graceful, lady-like ways, the sweetest possible voice, and
the loveliest eyes that ever looked, with girlish innocence, into the
face of the man who felt that love her he could, and love her he would,
in spite of himself.

There was something irresistibly attractive and sweet to Paul Murray, in
watching the love between his little daughter and the young girl.
Kittie's slightest word was law to Pansy; and there was something so
womanly in the way she exercised her influence, and made the child's
love a source of benefit unto her spoiled, wayward little self.

When fall drifted into the chilly reign of winter, Mr. Murray went back
to the city. He had intended going long before, but had put it off, a
week at a time, until winter had finally come; then he decided with a
sudden determination, and, as if to test his firmness of purpose, had
slipped away from Pansy, and galloped into town, trusting to the
darkness to hide from Canfield's prying eyes, that he was coming to the
Dering's alone. Not that he cared; oh, no, he would just as soon have
heralded to every soul therein that it was so, but for Kittie's sake,
it was best to give no one's tongue a chance to wag. Many a bud is
rudely hastened into blossom by impatient fingers, and withers from the
shock; it must not be so now.

He fastened h