kindly.

"I was up all night with Mr Cupples," answered Alec, longing to be
alone that he might think things out, "and I am anxious about him. I
should be quite uneasy if I did stay--thank you, Mr Fraser."

"Ah! well; your excuse is a good one," answered the old man. And they
parted.

Alec went home with such a raging jealousy in his heart, that he almost
forgot Mr Cupples, and scarcely cared how he might find him. For this
was the first time he had heard of any acquaintance between the
professor and Beauchamp. And why should Kate hesitate to shake hands
with him? He recalled how her hand had trembled and fluttered on his
arm when he spoke of the red stain on the water; and how she had
declined to shake hands with him when he told her that he had come from
the dissecting-room. And the conviction seized him that Beauchamp had
been working on her morbid sensitiveness to his disadvantage--taking
his revenge on him, by making the girl whom he worshipped shrink from
him with irrepressible loathing.

And in the lulls of his rage and jealousy, he had some glimpses into
Kate's character. Not that he was capable of thinking about it; but
flashes of reality came once and again across the vapours of passion.
He saw too that her nerves came, as it were, nearer the surface than
those of other people, and that thence she was exposed to those sudden
changes of feeling which had so often bewildered him. And now that
delicate creature was in the hands of Beauchamp--a selfish and
vulgar-minded fellow! That he whom he had heard insult a dead woman,
and whom he had chastised for it, should dare to touch Kate! His very
touch was defilement. But what could he do? Alas! he could only hate.
And what was that, if Kate should love! But she could not love him
already. He would tell her what kind of a person he was. But she would
not believe him, and would set it down to jealousy. And it would be
mean to tell her. Was Kate then to be left to such a fate without a
word of warning? He _would_ tell her, and let her despise him.--And so
the storm raged all the way home. His only comfort lay in saying over
and over again that Kate could not be in love with him yet.

But if he had seen Kate, that same evening, looking up into Beauchamp's
face with a beauty in her own such as he had never beheld there, a
beauty more than her face could hold, and overflowing in light from her
eyes, he would have found this poor reed of comfort break in his hand
and