"Poor Maria!" she whispered to her pillow as she went to bed--"poor
Maria!"




CHAPTER XV.


It was a long time before he came. Months afterward, one evening when
the express-train rushed into the dépôt, Catharine went down through
the walnut trees into the garden. She stopped in the shadow as a man's
figure crossed the fields. The air was cool--it was early spring. The
clouds in the west threw the Book--house into shadow. Hugh Guinness,
coming home, could see the narrow-paned windows twinkling behind the
walnut boughs. It was just as he had left it when he was a boy. There
was the cow thrusting her head through a break in the fence he had
made himself; the yellow-billed ducks quacked about the pond he had
dug in the barnyard; the row of lilacs by the orchard fence were just
in blossom: they were always the latest on the farm, he remembered. He
saw Kitty, like the heart of his old home, waiting for him. Her white
dress and the hair pushed back from her face gave her an appearance of
curious gentleness and delicacy.

When he came to her he took both her hands in his.

"You will come to your father now?" she said, frightened and pale.

They walked side by side down the thick rows of young saplings. There