p. 1CHAPTER I

Through the still summer dusk the night mail for London roared down the long declivity, clashed into a cutting and forth again, screamed, flashed past the deserted little station of Dunford, and thundered triumphantly along the level towards Kitty Carstairs.

Leaning on the fence bounding the track, the girl watched the tremendous approach with a fascination which custom had failed to dull. As the monster seemed to leap upon her, her attitude lost its easy laxness; she stood erect, her white-clad arms leaving the fence, her slim brown fingers clutching it. A sensation of oily, steamy warmth, a glimpse of two dark human figures in a fiery glow—and the great engine was past. A whirl of brilliantly-lighted corridors with their puppet-like occupants, a couple of darkened sleeping-cars, more carriages, a postal van, a p. 2guard’s van—and the train was gone. A rush of air cooled her delicately-tanned face and disturbed her unprotected dark hair. Her brown eyes gazed after the train, and saw the big net swing out from the postal van, and snatch the little leather-covered bundle from the iron arm, which Sam the postman had moved into position a minute earlier.

With a sigh Kitty took her hands from the fence. The thrill was over, the reaction had come. For a moment she hesitated. Should she wait for Sam, the postman, as she sometimes did, and get his honest, cheerful company home? No, she couldn’t be bothered with Sam to-night; she would sooner run the risk of meeting some one whom she would rather not meet.

She turned to cross the broad field that stretched between her and the main road, and found herself face to face with a young man in light tweeds, well cut but getting shabby. He was fairly tall, grey-eyed, and inclined to fairness, and his shaven countenance was decidedly attractive.

“Good evening,” he said, with a grave smile, as though not quite sure of his welcome.

She was startled, but recovered herself as quickly as the flush left her cheek. “Good evening, Mr. Hayward,” she returned in a tone of p. 3politeness softened by kindness. “I didn’t know you were in Dunford.”

“I came home this afternoon. May I walk a bit of the way with you?—that is if you aren’t—” He stopped short.

Following his gaze she saw the figure of a man crossing the field in their direction. She frowned slightly, saying: “You know your people won’t like it, Mr. Hayward.” Then hurriedly—“I don’t want to have to speak to Mr. Symington—if that’s he coming.”

“Then I’ll stay with you, Kitty, for it’s certainly Symington. Ah, he’s turning back. One would almost think he had heard you.”

“He couldn’t possibly hear me at that distance, unless in his mind,” she said. “And you had better not call me ‘Kitty,’ Mr. Hayward,” she added. It was more an appeal than a command.

He made no reply, and they walked a little way in silence. He was first to speak.

“So you still go down to watch the London mail run through.”

“Yes. I don’t miss many evenings, but then, you know, it’s the one sensation of this place—to me, at any rate.”

“The first time I ever saw you was at the p. 4fence there—five years ago, it must have been. Your hair was in a pigtail and—”

“I was sixteen then, and now I’m—about sixty.” She laughed rather drearily.

“And the last time I saw you, three months ago, you were there—”

“And no doubt if you come back in a hundred years, Mr. Hayward, you’ll find me there again!”

“I was glad to see you there to-night, Kitty—please don’t forbid me to be friendly. I’m feeling particularly friendless at present. Indeed, I think you might be kinder than call me ‘Mr. Hayward.’ What’s wrong with ‘Colin’?”

She ignored the question, but said kindly enough—“If you are in trouble, I’m sorry, and I hope it’s not serious.”

“I’ve failed in my final—for the second time.”

“Oh, Colin!” she exclaimed, sympathy putting an end to formality.

“Thanks, Kitty. That’s the most comforting thing I’ve heard since I came home.”

“Surely they weren’t hard on you.” Kitty’s social position was several steps down from that of Colin’s people, but behind her words lurked the suspicion, not based entirely on fancy, that the Haywards might have been very hard indeed on the youngest son and brother.

p. 5“Oh, I daresay I deserved the dressing-down I got,” he returned. “You see my parents, brothers, and sisters take my failure as a sort of public affront. My brothers have been brilliant, and because two of them became a minister and a lawyer without any apparent trouble, my father can’t see why I have not become a doctor with equal ease and speed.”

“But you never wanted to be a doctor.”

“That is not the point, Kitty. I was expected to become one. Well, I’ve struggled through four professionals, but Providence—I’ve no doubt about its being Providence—says I’ve gone far enough for humanity’s sake.”

“Do you mean that you are not going to try again?” she asked after a moment.

“Exactly! And that has added to the trouble at home. I’m twenty-five, and I told them that I could not go on wasting more years at a thing I was plainly not adapted for. They insisted that I should go on, and I respectfully but firmly refused.” He paused.

“Well, Colin?”—anxiously.

“I don’t want you to imagine,” he said slowly, “that I’m thinking any evil of my people. I understand their feelings, their pride, and so on, well enough; but they don’t understand me one p. 6little bit. Well, I’m going to look for something to do that doesn’t require a university brain. To begin with, I’m going to London—”

“London! Oh!”

“Still hankering, Kitty?” he gently inquired.

“Never mind me. Please tell me more—if you want to.”

“There isn’t any more. If you are watching the train to-morrow night, you may see the last of me. I’ll be on the look out, anyway.”

They had come to the gate leading to the main road, and by tacit agreement they halted.

“But you haven’t quarrelled with your people, Colin?”

He smiled queerly. “We don’t quarrel in our family—more’s the pity. We bottle it up, and of course that preserves the resentment. So, as far as I can see, we shall part politely, but I’m perfectly well aware that I needn’t trouble to come home again until I can prove that my way was the right one.” His tone changed suddenly. “But that’s enough—too much—about my affairs. Tell me something about yourself, Kitty.”

She shook her head. “I must go; it’s almost ten, and—”

“Let me come as far as the end of the little wood.”

p. 7She hesitated and gave in. It was for the last time. “We must walk quickly, then,” she said.

But their steps lagged in the darkness of the pines.

“Do you still want to get away from Dunford?” he asked her. “Does the London train still call you?”

“Oh, don’t speak about it! And please try to forget that I ever spoke about it. I’m a silly girl no longer.”

“I never thought your ideas and ambitions silly, Kitty.”

“You tried to discourage them,” she said quickly.

“That was my selfishness. I didn’t want you to go away from Dunford. It may not be a very lively place, but it’s safe. Quite a number of people seem to find moderate happiness in the neighbourhood.”

“The happiness of turnips!” she said fiercely, then laughed sadly. “Oh, that wasn’t fair of me,” she went on. “But, you know, before I came to live with my aunt and uncle here, I always looked forward to seeing the world and doing something in it, and my father encouraged me—but there’s no use in going over that again. p. 8Some day, perhaps, I’ll resign myself to selling postage stamps, and sending telegrams and—”

“Are your uncle and aunt still set against your going elsewhere? Now that you’re of age they could hardly prevent—”

“Please say no more, Colin. When you come back rich or famous, or both, you will find me here.”

He could not check the words that rushed from his heart. “Kitty, if I could only hope that I might find you here—waiting.”

She did not affect to misunderstand him.

“You don’t really mean that,” she said quietly. “We are too good friends for that sort of thing. Yes, I believe we are good friends, although our friendship has not all been open and straightforward. But I’m glad we’ve had it, Colin, and I don’t want to be sorry afterwards.”

“I never supposed you could love me,” he said sadly, “but since you allow the friendship, will you let me write to you? You’re the only friend I feel I want to write to while I’m trying to prove that my way is the right one.”

She considered before she said, “I’d like to hear from you, but you must not write. It will only make trouble. And now I must say good-bye and—good luck.” She put out her hand.

p. 9He held it, striving with himself. Then he said a little unsteadily, “I think you must know that I have cared for you all along, and because I may never see you again, will you—will you let me kiss you—once?”

“But, Colin, you understand that I—I don’t love you?”

“Too well!”

She could just see that his face was white. She made an almost imperceptible movement, and it was not of refusal.

A moment later he was gone.

When the sound of his footsteps had ceased, Kitty stirred.

“Am I crying?” she said to herself, and wiped her eyes. “Poor Colin, poor boy! I wonder if he will write, after all.” She started for home. “And I thought I had sort of got over the London longing,” she sighed.

p. 10CHAPTER II

By taking the path through the wood she had cut off a wide curve of the main road. She was nearly home. Already the few remaining lights of the village bade her welcome back to dullness.

“Five years!” she said to herself, “and I may live in it for fifty more.”

Kitty Carstairs scarcely remembered her mother. She had been brought—or allowed to bring herself up—by her father, a Glasgow journalist of brilliant parts and erratic methods, a wretched manager of his worldly affairs, a delightful guest, an entertaining host, and altogether a very lovable fellow. Kitty adored him, and ignored his weaknesses and eccentricities. When he died after a long illness, she wished she might follow him quickly. He left a little money, and just enough debts to eat it up, five MSS. of novels, two collections of travel sketches, and a play—all in a more or less unfinished state—and a letter p. 11to Kitty’s only relatives, the brother and sister of his dead wife.

Kitty never saw the contents of that letter; all she knew was that it seemed to procure her a home with John Corrie and his sister in the village of Dunford.

For many years John Corrie had been postmaster as well as proprietor of a flourishing general store, the only shop of importance in the place. A canny man and a far-sighted was John Corrie, grasping but not exactly mean. If the villagers did not love him, they respected his success. He had “got on” marvellously. Apart from the store he owned a mill, bought for an old song from the trustee of a bankrupt, and a coal yard taken over from an unlucky merchant and mortgagee. Also he had invested savings in land and houses. For some years, also, he had indulged in more speculative transactions. He was a tall, gaunt man with small, pale blue eyes, a long melancholy nose, a tight mouth, and high prominent cheek-bones over scanty grizzling whiskers, which ran into a short untidy beard. His head was quite bald. He was an abstainer, and a regular attender at public worship, though not an office-bearer of the church.

His sister Rachel assisted him capably in p. 12the store. She may have been a good-looking maiden; now she was a scraggy, drear-visaged creature with a curiously suspicious manner and a craze for doing everything precisely as her mother had done it. She seemed to object to youth discovering or making use of a new method. She was mean in some ways, but, perhaps for lack of courage, not so grasping as her brother. To him she was devoted.

Kitty attended to the post-office which served a district sparsely populated, but of considerable extent. She had never received a penny for this. On the other hand her relations did not grudge her in board, lodging and clothing; and twice a year they gave her a pound to spend as she liked. She divided the money on “pretty things” and books. Books, by the way, had initiated the friendship between her and Colin Hayward. He had lent her many, but only one at a time, for the thing had to be done secretly; but he, at least, preferred “one at a time,” since it meant frequent meetings during his holidays.

As Kitty neared the cottage, which was ancient looking without but fairly modern within, and which was connected with the store and post-office, she was suddenly informed by her eyes p. 13that the room on the right of the door was illuminated. Unless on a Sunday night, it was a rare thing to see a light in the parlour. The Corries received few visitors, with the exception of Alec Symington, the owner of White Farm, and a familiar guest like him was expected to feel at home in the kitchen.

The girl was uncertain what to do. She rejected the temptation to steal upstairs to bed; she was not going to let them think she was afraid of them at this time of day! Well, there was nothing for it but to go into the kitchen and wait. Noiselessly she entered and seated herself in a wicker chair.

A moment later the silence in the opposite room was broken, and by her aunt’s voice raised to an unusual pitch.

“The more I think on it, John Corrie, the more I see what a fool ye’ve been. To take fifty pound for a thing that’s come worth twenty thousand—that’ll maybe yet be worth thirty, forty, ay fifty thousand—”

“Hold your tongue, woman!” Kitty scarcely recognized her uncle’s voice. “How could I, or anybody, ha’ foreseen that the shares would go up? Five year ago the broker in Glasgow told us they were rubbish. Six months ago ye p. 14agreed I had done well to get fifty pound for them from Symington—”

“Oh, he knew what he was doing—he knew, though you didn’t!”

“I don’t believe he did. He’s been daft about gold mines for years. He’d ha’ been ruined by now if his father hadna died and left him White Farm. I tell ye, Rachel, he bought the five thousand shares off me with his eyes shut, just for a speculation. Don’t talk! Ye know well ye were as sick-tired as I was o’ seeing the certificates lying in the safe, wi’ never a ha’penny o’ interest to—”

“No, no, John, we’ve been cheated—don’t care what ye say—and it’s maybe a judgment on us—”

“That’s enough! Ye mun make the best o’ a bad job. And it’ll maybe no be so bad in the end.” Corrie let out a laugh. “Ye’ll no complain if we get half o’ whatever he gets for the shares, when he sells them.”

“Oh, dinna begin on that again. He’ll never pay up.”

“Ay, he’ll pay up. I’ve got his bond in my pocket!”

“Ye didna tell me! How did ye manage it?”

Corrie replied, but he had lowered his voice p. 15and only a murmur reached Kitty’s ears. She was not interested in her uncle’s affairs generally, but it was something new to hear of his having been “done,” for “done” was the word that came into her mind the moment she understood Symington’s part in the business. Eavesdropping, however, was not one of her weaknesses, and she rose with the intention of making known her presence in the house.

Just then her aunt’s voice rose in a sort of screech of incredulity—

“But she’ll never consent!”

“We’ll see about that. Leave it to me.”

Once more the voices became indistinct. In the kitchen doorway Kitty stopped short. Whom were they talking about now? Herself? When had her consent ever been asked for anything? For a few moments she hesitated, tempted to lay her ear against the parlour door. Then throwing up her head, she stepped softly along the passage and shut the front door with a bang.

As she turned from it the parlour door was snatched open, and her uncle’s face peered out. His brow was glistening and his eyes held gleams of excitement; but his voice was curiously mild.

“Come in here for a minute, Kitty,” he said.

She followed him into the room, wondering. p. 16This was not the customary reception on her return from seeing the London mail go by, and she was later to-night than ever she had been. Her aunt, sitting with folded hands on one side of the fern-filled hearth, gave her an instant’s glance, which conveyed nothing, and resumed staring at the folded, toil-worn hands in her lap. Her uncle took his chair on the other side, saying—

“Sit down. Ye’re late, but maybe ye’ve a good reason for that.” It may have been a smile that distorted, for a moment, his thin lips.

Kitty drew a chair from the table, seated herself and waited. She had learned long ago never to open a conversation with these two.

Mr. Corrie rubbed his hairy jaw between finger and thumb, cleared his throat, and said, almost pleasantly—“Well, did he meet ye?”

It was an unexpected question, and she could not answer immediately.

He helped her by adding, “Ye needna be shy. Mr. Symington left here half-an-hour back to look for ye.”

“No,” she answered, “he didn’t meet me.” Strange that her uncle should speak of the man as “Mr.”

“Eh? No.” She repeated. “He didn’t meet me.”

p. 17“That’s queer.” Uncle and aunt exchanged glances, and the latter asked. “Where were ye to-night?”

“At the railway.”

“And ye didn’t see Mr. Symington?”

“Yes. I saw him—at a distance.”

There was a pause before Mr. Corrie spoke with less smoothness than previously.

“Did ye keep away from him!”

“Not more than usual.”

“I want a plain answer.”

“No.”

“Then—who was wi’ ye at the time?”

Kitty flushed and went pale. “Mr. Colin Hayward.”

“What? That useless waster! Were ye not forbidden to ha’ any acquaintance—”

“And he’s failed again in his examinations!” cried Miss Corrie. “It’s the talk o’ the place.”

“What ha’ ye to say for yourself?” roared her brother.

“Nothing,” came the quiet answer; “nothing that would satisfy you or Aunt Rachel. I had no intention of meeting Mr. Hayward to-night, but when I did meet him I was not going to pretend I did not know him because he had failed in an examination. And before long I p. 18was very glad I had met him, for his presence kept away Mr. Symington. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed—”

A warning glance from his sister caused Mr. Corrie to strive for self-control.

“Sit still,” he said shortly. “Ye know perfectly well it’s no the thing for you to be walking wi’ one o’ the Haywards. Mrs. Hayward, as ye’re maybe not unaware, complained about it last year—”

“That’ll do, John,” interposed Miss Corrie, observing the girl’s burning cheeks. “We’re as good as the Haywards any day, but we’d best forget that affair. Now that Kitty’s heard about it, she’ll know what to do in future.”

Kitty mastered the quiver of her pretty mouth, and with a quick movement brushed the tears from her dark eyes, and looked straight at her uncle.

“Please tell me at once,” she said, “what Mr. Symington wanted with me.”

The directness of the question had a disconcerting effect on Mr. Corrie.

“Maybe you could guess,” he mumbled at last.

Kitty ignored the invitation.

“Ye’d best tell her, Rachel,” said Mr. Corrie.

“Mr. Symington is anxious to marry ye,” the woman said in little more than a whisper.

p. 19Without haste Kitty got up and moved to the door. Turning there, she faced them both. Her voice was clear and steady—

“I would not marry Mr. Symington for—for twenty thousand pounds.”

The man sprang to his feet, but she was gone, the door closed behind her.