become to her an admired mystery, which, however, at first she did not
dare wish to solve. She had been content to be a kind of handmaiden to a
generous and adored master. She knew that where he had been she could in
one sense never go, and yet she wanted to be near him just the same.
This was intensified after the Logan Trial and the shooting of the man
who somehow seemed to have made her live in a new way.

As long ago as she could recall she had, in a crude, untutored way, been
fond of the things that nature made beautiful; but now she seemed to see
them in a new light, but not because any one had deliberately taught her.
Indeed, it bored her almost to hear books read as Jesse Bulrush and Nurse
Egan, and even her mother, read them to Crozier after his operation, to
help him pass away the time. The only time she ever cared to listen--
at school, though quick and clever, she had never cared for the printed
page--was when, by chance, poetry or verses were read or recited. Then
she would listen eagerly, not attracted by the words, but by the music of
the lines, by the rhyme and rhythm, by the underlying feeling; and she
got something out of it which had in one sense nothing to do with the
verses themselves or with the conception of the poet.

Curiously enough, she most liked to hear Jesse Bulrush read. He was a
born sentimentalist, and this became by no means subtly apparent to Kitty
during Crozier's illness. Whenever Nurse Egan was on duty Jesse
contrived to be about, and to make himself useful and ornamental too;
for he was a picturesque figure, with a taste for figured waistcoats and
clean linen--he always washed his own white trousers and waistcoats, and
he had a taste in ties, which he made for himself out of silk bought by
the yard. He was, in fact, a clean, wholesome man, with a flair for
material things, as he had shown in the land proposal on which Shiel
Crozier's fortunes hung, but with no gift for carrying them out, having