His sister, whose business instincts were much too strong to permit her wrapping up such a "talent" as a freehold house in the napkin of unfruitful occupation, looked round to see how she could best turn it to account. Accident threw in her way a girl of large fortune with no relations, whose guardians, thankful to find a respectable home for her, readily agreed to pay Miss Payne handsomely for taking charge of the orphan. Her first _protegee_ married well, under her auspices, and from henceforth her house was rarely empty. Sometimes she accepted a roving commission and travelled with her charge, meanwhile letting her house in town, so making a double profit. It was on one of these expeditions that she was introduced to Mrs. and Miss Liddell. There was an air of sincerity and common-sense about the composed elderly gentlewoman which rather attracted the former, and, when they met again in Paris, Miss Payne came to Katie in her trouble and proved a brave and capable nurse; nor was she unsympathetic, though far from effusive. So, finding that Miss Payne's last young lady had left her, Katherine, with the approval of Mr. Newton, proposed to become her inmate for a year--an arrangement entirely in accordance with Miss Payne's wishes. "I did not know you were acquainted with Miss Liddell," she said one evening when she was sitting with her brother, Katherine having retired early, as she often did. "It is quite a surprise to me." "I can hardly say I am acquainted with her; I happened to be of some slight use to her once, and I met her after by accident, when we spoke; that is all." "I wonder she did not mention it to me." "I imagine she hardly knew my name." Miss Payne uttered an inarticulate sound between a h'm and a groan, by which she generally expressed indefinite dissent and disapprobation. Then she rose and walked to the dwarf bookcase at the end of the room to fetch her tatting. She was tall and slight. Following her, you might imagine her young, for her figure was good and her step brisk. Meeting her face to face, her pale, slightly puckered cheeks, closely compressed lips, keen light eyes, and crisp pepper-and-salt hair--Cayenne pepper, for it had once been red--suggested at least twenty or twenty-five additional years as compared with the back view. Returning to her seat, she began to tat, slowing drawing each knot home with a reflective air. "That woman is hunting her up," she exclaimed suddenly, after a few minutes' silence, during which Bertie looked thoughtfully at the fire--his quiet face, with its look of unutterable peace, the strongest possible contrast to his sister's hard, shrewd aspect. "What woman?" asked, as if recalled from a dream. "Mrs. Ormonde. There was a telegram from her this afternoon. She has been worrying Miss Liddell to go to them ever since she set foot in England; and as that won't do, she is coming up to-morrow to see what personal persuasion will do."