“You must go to her again,” exclaimed Kate, eagerly; “tell her you have mentioned her necessities to a lady of your acquaintance, who is willing, and, thank God, able to assist her; give her money; find out what she most requires; devise some plan by which she may be enabled to support herself and educate her children. Oh! if I can save this poor family from ruin, it will be some little----” She checked herself abruptly, then continued: “Mr. Crane is most liberal to me, and allows me more than I have the least occasion or desire to spend on myself--so do not let them want for anything. And oh! be most careful--you say she is a lady, poor thing!--be most careful not to wound her feelings. You do not know how shrinkingly sensitive poverty makes natures that are at all refined.” “I fear Mr. Crane’s words, spoken, I dare say, under a very just feeling of annoyance, both pained and irritated her,” returned D’Almayne. “She naturally draws a strong line between the fact that her husband has been imprudent and unfortunate, and the insinuation that he had been criminal. Mr. Crane, I grieve to say, appeared to doubt the truth of her statement, that Mr. Leonard was ignorant of his partner’s intended flight and defalcation.” “Ungenerous! cruel!” murmured Kate, carried away by her excitement, and forgetting, or perhaps at the moment scarcely heeding, the fact that D’Almayne’s quick ears were eagerly drinking in these acknowledgments of the estimation in which she held her husband. “I am most anxious to save you all trouble in this matter,” resumed D’Almayne; “but it would be a great satisfaction to me, and relieve me of a responsibility for which I am scarcely fitted, if you would not object to visit Mrs. Leonard yourself: She is already most anxious to see and thank the kind benefactress to whom I have informed her she is indebted. Were you once to talk to her, you would perceive the gentle yet strong nature we have to deal with; you would learn her hopes, fears, and prospects, from her own lips, rather than through such an unworthy interpreter as myself; you would see the interesting children;--may I hope that you will consent?” Kate paused--considered; but her answer demands a fresh chapter. CHAPTER XXXVII.--A CONCESSION, AND A “PARTIE QUARRÉE.” The question we left Kate Crane considering in the last chapter she decided thus:-- “I should like to visit Mrs. Leonard,” she said slowly. “I feel the truth of all you urge--but there are difficulties in the way; Mr. Crane would greatly disapprove of such a proceeding on my part.” “He need never know it,” suggested D’Almayne, in a voice little above a whisper. “He need not,” returned Kate, calmly, “but I have since my marriage made it a point of conscience never to do anything which I should object to Mr. Crane’s hearing of; I still consider the rule a good one, and am disinclined to break through it.”