The next week passed very quietly. Frank still teazed Katie, and Katie fought sturdily, but she felt the battle was lost. There was no mistaking the quiet tone in which he sometimes spoke to her, so different from his general strain of light jesting with her, and the way in which he spoke to others. She fought because it was her nature to fight, but she was no longer indignant at his sallies—fought as a beaten enemy, surrounded and outnumbered fights, as a matter of honour and not of hope. She resisted occasionally, and tried to struggle against the influence he exerted over her. But the bird was in the net and knew it. She beat her wings and fluttered in vain; and ere the fortnight was over, Frank held her to his heart and her struggles were over. She was content to nestle there quietly, and answered as he wished to the question, “And do you believe me at last, dear Katie?”
A CLOUD has fallen upon the little shop in New Street. Stephen Walker is restless and anxious, for he feels that something is going wrong. Carry has changed so much during the last three months that he cannot but notice it. Her bright colour has quite gone now, and only comes back in sudden starts and flushes. Her manner, too, has altered even more than her appearance. She, who used to be so lively and gay, who was always humming scraps of song over her work, has now become silent and abstracted. If she noticed that her father was watching her she would break out in a burst of fitful merriment, talking and laughing in a forced, unnatural way, which was even more painful than her silence. Stephen Walker was a long time before he arrived reluctantly at the conclusion that there was something wrong with Carry. At first he tried hard to persuade himself that the change existed only in his own imagination—that she was a little poorly, perhaps, nothing more; but at last he could no longer deceive himself, there was evidently something mentally, or physically, altogether wrong with her. Very sadly the old man pondered over the matter, and wearied himself with conjectures as to what could be the cause. She had no bodily ill, and quite repudiated any suggestion he made to that effect. She was perfectly well, she said, and Stephen Walker at last came to the conclusion it must be upon her mind. It was evident that nothing could make her unhappy except some love affair; and if so, with whom could Carry be in love? When this question was once fairly raised in Stephen Walker's mind he set himself to watch; but it was a long time after he did so before he came to any conclusion upon the subject, still longer before he could make up his mind to speak to her about it. One day, however, when he came into the shop after a short absence on business, he found the gentleman he suspected leaning on the counter talking confidentially with Carry. At the sight of her father she started and coloured painfully, while the gentleman rose hastily, saying,—