And when in quiet moments he assured me with melting gaze that I
was a being to challenge the very heart of love--in some measure, at
least, did my soul gain strength from his own.
To know as much as I have indicated had been unavoidable for one of any
intuitive powers. The change at once to be detected in Miss Kate's
manner toward me confirmed my divinations without enlarging them. Miss
Katharine Lansdale was gone forever; in her place was a Miss Kate,--even
a Little Miss to the eye,--who regarded me at first with an undisguised
alarm, then with a curious interfusion of alarm and shyness, a little
disguised with not a little effort. This was plain reading. She would at
first have distrusted me, apprehending I know not what rashness of
ill-timed and forever impossible declarations. As she perceived this
alarm to be baseless, for I not only refrained from intruding but I
ostentatiously let Miss Kate alone, shyness would creep into her
apprehension to make amends for its first crude manifestations.
As the days went by and I displayed still the fine sense to keep myself
aloof, to seek Miss Kate only in those ways that I sought her refreshing
mother, she let me discern more clearly her faith in my firmness and
good sense.
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