“Yes, I knew,” he answered cheerfully, and now his voice had got back its old confident ring, for the shadow of constraint which Katherine had noticed in him last night had been owing to this knowledge which he was holding back, and which had troubled him more than he cared to confess.  “But even then there was no great certainty of my succeeding.  Cousin Samuel might have married again, and left another son to come after him.  I was just a working man, and I looked to support my wife by the labour of my hands.  You must forgive me that I did not tell you I was going to make a great lady of you, because, you see, I did not know until yesterday, though the scrap of paper you discovered at Ochre Lake warned me that the title might not be far off; so I was not greatly surprised when Mr. Clay introduced himself to me yesterday.”

“Mr. Clay is evidently a lawyer by nature as well as by profession, since he was able to keep a secret of such magnitude through so many miles of travel,” interposed the bishop, anxious to break the strain for Katherine, whose colour was still coming and going, and whose eyes had the frightened look of a trapped wild creature.

“I was sure there must be some story of greatness behind, when it became necessary for a family lawyer to take such a journey as this,” Mary Selincourt said, with an easy laugh, doing her best to second the bishop’s efforts to draw off attention from Katherine for a time.  “And now, don’t you think we might as well start feeding the multitude, Nellie? or they will not be in a proper frame of mind to appreciate the bishop’s sermon presently.”

The diversion was effectual; everyone poured outside to where tables were spread under the trees by the river.  Tea, coffee, cakes, and lemonade became the concern of the moment.  And in the kitchen the two who had been made husband and wife were left alone.

“Am I forgiven, your ladyship?” Jervis asked; but there was a note of anxiety in his bantering tone, for Katherine’s head was averted, and held at an angle which made him apprehensive.

“Jervis, why did you not tell me while there was time to draw back?  For I—­I am not fit to be a great lady!” she burst out passionately.

“I did not tell you because I was so horribly afraid you would want to draw back,” he admitted candidly, “and I wanted you so badly that I could not afford to take the risk.  You are quite as fit to be a great lady as I am to be a great gentleman; that goes without saying.”

“But think of the work I have had to do?” she faltered, shrinking and shivering at the prospect before her.

“Work is no degradation,” he answered hastily, “or my days in the Nantucket whaler might easily rise up in judgment against me; for I am certain there can be no more filthy or disgusting work on the face of the earth than I did then.  Perhaps it is better for us that we have had to toil so hard; we shall be better able to sympathize with other workers, and to help them.”