Kate asserted complete recovery and proceeded to dress, though with a languid dilatoriness which belied her statement. The house was nearly full of her women-folk relations, and she dreaded to face them. She looked at herself in the mirror and fancied every one would read her night's ride in her jaded pallor and the shadows about her eyes. Even her father noticed them when she entered the breakfast-room, with a "You don't look over bright, Kitty!" The company was assembled in full force about the table, and she had to run the gauntlet of their smirking condolements. "Never mind. I will put you right. It's bile." Homoeopathy smiled comfortably from behind the tea-urn, and Kate for the first time thanked Providence for the birth of Dr. Hahnemann. She noticed with relief that the meal was nearly over, but gained no respite thereby. For, after breakfast, there were new presents to be inspected and acclaimed--noticeably one from Poonah, a jade idol of most admired ugliness. Kate explained her shiver of repulsion by the carven malice of its features. Then followed consultations upon frocks, interspersed with eulogies of David and predictions of the happiness in store for well-assorted couples, plainly calling for enthusiastic answers nicely tempered by a diffident modesty. At times, indeed, the task almost exceeded her powers of endurance, and she felt madly spurred to hurl the truth like a bombshell into the midst of the flummery. She restrained herself, however, drawing a faint solace of amusement from a mental picture of the resultant chaos, and somehow or another the day wore on to its close. "They will know in the morning," she reflected. But she was mistaken. It was not until the third day that the news of the liberation came. * * * * *