'Ready for what?' inquires the young lady with transparent dissimulation. Whatever her private discomfiture may be, she has no intention of proclaiming it to all the world--least of all to Walter Reeves. 'We shall be late. Your mamma offered me a seat in your carriage; so I have taken her at her word, and am come to join your party.' 'We are not going to the Admiral's to-night.' 'Not going! Is anybody ill?' He starts back a step, as though the news is incredible; and Katie laughs merrily. 'We are all quite well, thank you; but we don't consider ourselves bound to attend every party. You don't grudge us a quiet evening at home sometimes, do you?' 'O no, certainly not; but I'm sorry your taste for retirement asserts itself to-night. I'm horridly disappointed; and if there's anything in the world I hate, it's these semi-official, stuck-up assemblies. I'd far rather stay here and have a chat with your father.' Walter Reeves has seated himself by this time, and is watching Katie, as she plucks off a geranium leaf from a stand near her and crushes it between her fingers. 'You'll be sure to enjoy yourself when you get there.' 'I'm very sure I _shan't_. You 're the only one I cared to meet! I can tell you the Admiral expects you all.' 'How can you possibly know that?' 'Because he said so. I went to his office this morning about some question of duty, and he suggested I could talk it over this evening with your father, for you were all going to Government House.' A quick blush rises to Katie's cheeks, giving a wonderful brilliancy to her complexion; just the warmth and tinge needed to make her beauty perfect. She stoops down, apparently to look more closely at the geranium leaf, in reality to hide the glow of triumph that flashes from her eyes, as her rapid thoughts sum up the case. 'So Sir Herbert is not to blame after all. _He_ expects me to-night. Who then can have thrown this slight on our household?--I know! I know! Blind that I was, not to suspect it before! Mrs Best, the Admiral's daughter, has done it. She is afraid and jealous of me!' The geranium leaf falls to the floor, but Katie does not notice it, nor does she see that Walter is smoothing it out, to the evident damage of his pure white kid gloves. He is furtively gazing at Katie in a half-vexed, half-admiring manner; thinking how well she looks in that dusky, shadowy, black dress, with that band of crimson velvet in her hair. Not one of the girls at the Government House party, with all their splendour and show and glitter, will match her. He has never seen her equal, except perhaps in the orange groves and sunny gardens at Valparaiso. There he has sometimes met with beautiful women, graceful houris, resolute with beauty and light, tinged and ripened with the glow of that fervid climate. 'You will be dreadfully late at the party. Why do you waste your time here?'