“No...no.”
“Well then! Dry your eyes. No handkerchief? How like you, Catherine!” He threw her his. “You may keep that,” he said, “and think of me when I am gone.”
She took the handkerchief as though already it were a sacred thing.
He went on, his voice shaking: “And you must give me one of yours, Catherine, that I may keep it.”
She wiped her eyes.
He said tenderly: “It is only for a little while, Catherine.”
Now she was smiling.
“I should have known,” she said. “Of course you will go away.”
“When I return we shall have very many pleasant days together, Catherine.”
“Yes, Thomas.” Being Catherine, she could think of the reunion rather than the parting, even now.
He slipped off his horse, and she immediately did likewise; he held out his hands, and she put hers into them.
“Catherine, do you ever think of when we are grown up...really grown up, not just pretending to be?”
“I do not know, Thomas. I think perhaps I may have.”
“When we are grown up, Catherine, we shall marry...both of us. Catherine. I may marry
“Thomas! Would you?”
“I might,” he said.
She was pretty, with the smile breaking through her tears.
“Yes,” he said, “I think mayhap I will. And now, Catherine, you will not mind so much that I must go away, for you must know, we are both young in actual fact. Were we not, I would marry you now and take you with me.”
They were still holding hands, smiling at each other; he, flushed with pleasure at his beneficence in offering her such a glorious prospect as marriage with him; she, overwhelmed by the honor he did her.
He said: “When people are affianced, Catherine, they kiss. I am going to kiss you now.”
He kissed her on either cheek and then her soft baby mouth. Catherine wished he would go on kissing her, but he did not, not over-much liking the operation and considering it a necessary but rather humiliating formality; besides, he feared that there might be those to witness this and do what he dreaded most that people would do, laugh at him.
“That,” he said, “is settled. Let us ride.”
Catherine had been so long at Hollingbourne that she came to regard it as her home. Thomas came home occasionally, and there was nothing he liked better than to talk of the wild adventures he had had; and never had he known a better audience than his young cousin. She was so credulous, so ready to admire. They both looked forward to these reunions, and although they spoke not of their marriage which they had long ago in the paddock decided should one day take place, they neither of them forgot nor wished to repudiate the promises. Thomas was not the type of boy to think over-much of girls except when they could be fitted into an adventure where, by their very helplessness and physical inferiority, they could help to glorify the resourcefulness and strength of the male. Thomas was a normal, healthy boy whose thoughts had turned but fleetingly to sex; Catherine, though younger, was conscious of sex, and had been since she was a baby; she enjoyed Thomas’s company most when he held her hand or lifted her over a brook or rescued her from some imaginary evil fate. When the game was a pretense of stealing jewels, and she must pretend to be a man, the adventure lost its complete joy for her. She remembered still the quick, shamefaced kisses he had given her in the paddock, and she would have loved to have made plans for their marriage, to kiss now and then. She dared not tell Thomas this, and little did he guess that she was all but a woman while he was yet a child.
So passed the pleasant days until that sad afternoon when a serving-maid came to her, as she sat in the wide window seat of the main nursery, to tell her that her uncle and aunt would have speech with her, and she was to go at once to her uncle’s chamber.
As soon as Catherine reached that room she knew that something was amiss, for both her uncle and her aunt looked very grave.
“My dear niece,” said Sir John, who frequently spoke for both, “come hither to me. I have news for you.”
Catherine went to him and stood before him, her knees trembling, while she prayed: “Please, God, let Thomas be safe and well.”
“Now that your grandfather, Lord Thomas the Duke, is no more,” said Sir John in the solemn voice he used when speaking of the dead, “your grandmother feels that she would like much to have you with her. You know your father has married again....” His face stiffened. He was a righteous man; there was nothing soft in his nature; it seemed to him perfectly reasonable that, his sister’s husband having married a new wife, his own responsibility for his sister’s child should automatically cease.
“Go...from here...?” stammered Catherine.
“To your grandmother in Norfolk.”
“Oh...but I...do not wish...Here, I have been...so happy....”
Her aunt put an arm about her shoulders and kissed her cheek.
“You must understand, Catherine, your staying here is not in our hands. Your father has married again...he wishes that you should go to your grandmother.”
Catherine looked from one to the other, her eyes bright with tears which overflowed, for she could never control her emotion.
