"The Colonel wants you, Mrs. Ormonde," he said; "and you too, De Burgh. We are not enough for pool, and you play a capital game, Mrs. Ormonde." "What are the stakes?" asked De Burgh, rising readily enough. "Oh, I can't play well at all," said Mrs. Ormonde, following him with evident reluctance. "Certainly not when Colonel Ormonde is looking on." "Oh, never mind him. I'll screen you from his hypercritical eyes," returned De Burgh, as he held the door open for her to pass out. So it was, after a spell of heavenly tranquility, as Katherine and her mother were on their way to England, intending to make a home in or near London, Mrs. Liddell had been struck down with fever, and Katherine was left unspeakably desolate. Then she turned to her old friend Mr. Newton, and found him of infinite use and comfort. A short space of numb inaction followed, during which she fully realized the loneliness of her position, and from which she roused herself to plan her future. At the time Mrs. Liddell was first attacked with fever they had just renewed their acquaintance with a Miss Payne, whom they had met in Rome and at Berlin. She was not unknown in society, for she came of a good old county family, and was half-sister of the Bertie whose name has already appeared in these pages. Their father, with an old man's pride in a handsome only son, had left the bulk of his fortune to Bertie, while Hannah, who had ministered to his comfort and borne his ill-humor, inherited only a paltry couple of hundred a year, with a fairly well furnished house in Wilton Street, Hyde Park. Her brother would have willingly added to this pittance, but she sternly refused to accept what did not of right belong to her. Bertie went with his regiment to India, whence he returned a wiser, a poorer, and a physically weaker man.