Two days later Katherine set out again, no longer alert and eager, but with a white face, a firm mouth, and a bearing so emphatically resolute that it suggested a previous agony of indecision. She took a 'bus from Lupus Street to the City. Getting out at Leadenhall Street, she walked on till she came to a building where an arrow painted on the doorway guided her to the offices of Messrs. Pigott & Co., on the third floor. On and on she went, up the broad stone stairs, with a sick heart and trembling knees, the steepest, weariest climb she had ever made in a life of climbing. When she reached the third floor she almost turned back at the sight of the closed door marked "Private." Then the thought of Vincent lying in his wretched room, a sudden blinding vision of his white face laid back on the pillows, overcame the last rebellion of her pride. She knocked; a well-regulated voice answered, "Who is there?" She brushed her eyelashes with her hand and walked in. "It's me, uncle." Mr. Pigott almost started from his seat. "You, Katherine? Bless me! Dear me, dear me!" He put on his spectacles, and examined her as if she had been some curious animal. And he, too, noticed not only her frayed skirt and the worn edges of the fur about her cloak, but the sharp lines of her face and the black shadows under her eyes. "Sit down, my dear." She obeyed, putting her elbow on the office table and resting her head in her hand. She looked defiantly, almost fiercely, before her, and spoke in a cold, hard voice-- "I've come to ask you if you'll lend us some money. We're in debt----" "In debt? Tt-t-t-tt--that's bad." "I know it is. But we've had illness in the house, and expenses that we had to meet." "Bless me! Is the boy ill?" "No; it's not Ted----" But as she tried to explain who it was she broke down utterly, and burst into tears. Then uncle James took off his spectacles and wiped them. He waited till she could speak coherently; and when he had heard, he took his cheque-book out of his drawer, asking no questions and making no comments--for which Katherine respected him. "How much will clear you, Katherine, and see you to the end of this business?" "Twenty pounds would clear us; but----" Uncle James looked very grave, and he wrote with a slow and terrible deliberation. But he smiled lavishly as he handed her a cheque for a hundred guineas. He had made it guineas. "Remember, there's plenty more where that came from." "I--I don't know how to thank you, uncle; we'll repay it gradually, with the interest." "Interest, indeed; you'll do nothing of the kind. And we won't say anything about repayment either, this time. Only keep out of debt--keep out of debt, and don't make a fool of yourself, Katherine." Katherine hesitated, and her voice trembled. "I--I'm not----" "No, I don't say you are. I ask no questions; and, Katherine!" he looked up, but she was still standing beside him. "Yes."