“You will be late at Fenchurch Street,” she said, with a constrained smile.  “It is nearly eleven now.”

“I am not going to the office to-day,” he answered gravely.  “I am come in here, Kate, to know my fate.  You know very well, and must have known for some time back, that I love you.  If you’ll marry me you’ll make me a happy man, and I’ll make you a happy woman.  I’m not very eloquent and that sort of thing, but what I say I mean.  What have you to say in answer?” He leaned his broad hands on the back of a chair as he spoke, and drummed nervously with his fingers.

Kate had drooped her head over the flowers, but she looked up at him now with frank, pitying eyes.

“Put this idea out of your head, Ezra,” she said, in a low but firm voice.  “Believe me, I shall always be grateful to you for the kindness which you have shown me of late.  I will be a sister to you, if you will let me, but I can never be more.”

“And why not?” asked Ezra, still leaning over the chair, with an angry light beginning to sparkle in his dark eyes.  “Why can you never be my wife?”

“It is so, Ezra.  You must not think of it.  I am so sorry to grieve you.”

“You can’t love me, then,” cried the young merchant hoarsely.  “Other women before now would have given their eyes to have had me.  Do you know that?”

“For goodness’ sake, then go back to the others,” said Kate, half amused and half angry.

That suspicion of a smile upon her face was the one thing needed to set Ezra’s temper in a blaze.  “You won’t have me,” he cried savagely.  “I haven’t got the airs and graces of that fellow, I suppose.  You haven’t got him out of your head, though he is off with another girl.”

“How dare you speak to me so?” Kate cried, springing to her feet in honest anger.

“It’s the truth, and you know it,” returned Ezra, with a sneer.  “Aren’t you too proud to be hanging on to a man who doesn’t want you—­ a man that is a smooth-tongued sneak, with the heart of a rabbit?”

“If he were here you would not dare to say so!” Kate retorted hotly.

“Wouldn’t I?” he snarled fiercely.

“No, you wouldn’t.  I don’t believe that he has ever been untrue to me.  I believe that you and your father have planned to make me believe it and to keep us apart.”

Heaven knows what it was that suddenly brought this idea most clearly before Kate’s mind.  Perhaps it was that Ezra’s face, distorted with passion, gave her some dim perception of the wickedness of which such a nature might be capable.  The dark face turned so much darker at her words that she felt a great throb of joy at her heart, and knew that this strange new thought which had flashed upon her was the truth.

“You can’t deny it,” she cried, with shining eyes and clenched hands.  “You know that it is true.  I shall see him and hear from his own lips what he has to say.  He loves me still, and I love him, and have never ceased to love him.”