else," he said. Katie
insisted that she had been training herself to regard him as Elizabeth's
husband. And to his reply that if she were so foolish, she must not make
him pay for her folly, she asserted with spirit that no one had ever
spoken so to her before. In truth, Lord Bulchester's assiduous humility
did make the directness of Stephen Archdale seem like assertion to her;
and Katie was not one to forget while she was talking with Stephen that
if she chose to turn her head, there were the beauties of a coronet and
of Lyburg Chase offered to her on bended knee. She had not turned her
head yet. Stephen told himself that he was sure that she never meant to,
but for all that, he was not quite sure that she would not do it almost
without meaning it. He began by insisting that now Bulchester should be
dismissed. But Katie declared that he should not be sent away as if she
had lost her own freedom the moment of Stephen's return to her. She
would send him away herself at least before she became Stephen's wife.
To Archdale's representations of the cruelty of this course, she
answered that Lord Bulchester had known of her engagement before he met
her. If he could not take care of himself, why, then----. And Katie
tossed her charming head a very little, and smiled at Stephen so
winningly, and added that it would not hurt him, that he yielded, with
as good a grace as he could, a position that he found untenable. So
Archdale waited, and Bulchester kept his place, whether more securely or
less Stephen could not tell.

One thing, however, was clear, that Stephen lost his peace of mind
without even the poor satisfaction of being sure that the state of
affairs was such as to make that necessary. Katie was a coquette, but he
felt that coquetry was fascinating only when one were sure of the right
side being turned toward himself, sure that it was another man's heart,
and not his own that was being played with. He had not come to
confessing to himself that in any case it was ignoble. So he waited
while the winter wore on, and March found him still betrothed to Katie
and still at her feet though in a mood that threatened danger. For after
asserting that she needed time to adapt herself to the altered condition
of things, she had found a new objection. She did not want to marry and
have her husband go off to the war before the honeymoon was over; she
preferred to wait until he returned. "Do you really mean to marry me at
all?" he asked.