“Never mind him,” said Kate, faintly; “what does it matter about them and their lunch? Oh, Parsons, I am so very miserable!” sobbed the poor girl. No, she did not mean to betray herself; but still a little sympathy, though not enough to touch the very skirts of her grievance, she must have. “Are you indeed, Miss?” said Parsons. “I am sure I’m very, very sorry; but if it’s only the headache it can’t last. There, I’ll put a wet handkerchief on your poor head; perhaps that will do it good.” “It is too deep for anything to do me good,” said Kate; but she suffered the handkerchief to be placed on her forehead, and put up with all those mysterious manipulations of the pillow and the hair and the patient which are orthodox in the circumstances. She lay with her eyes closed and the wet kerchief on her forehead, and her hair spread over the pillow, making her face look all the paler in comparison; her pretty mouth drawn down at the corners, her pale lips and closed eyelids, a very image of youthful misery. Her heart was broken, she thought; and oh, how her head ached! “Did you get your letters, Miss?” said Parsons softly, drawing out her bright hair, and bending over her sympathetically. But Parsons recoiled in another moment, giving the hair a tug in her consternation, as Kate suddenly stood before her, all blazing and glaring like an avenging angel, with one hand grasping her shoulder and the other clenched menacing in her face. “My letters!--oh, you wicked miserable woman, it is you who have made me so unhappy! My letters! what do you know of them?” cried Kate. “Lord, Miss!” said Parsons in dismay, backing before her. And then she began to cry. “I thought as you’d rather I brought ’em up-stairs. You weren’t in the drawing-room, nor nowhere to be seen. I meant it for the best,” cried Parsons, backing to the wall with such a terror of the clenched hand as was quite out of proportion to the powers of that little weapon of offence. “Give them to me,” cried Kate; “draw up the blinds--make haste and throw this wet thing away. My letters, my letters!--oh, if you only knew what harm you have done! Give them to me----” She sat down on the sofa under the window, which, after being veiled so carefully, now poured in upon her all the light of the full sunshiny October day. There was a note from Madeline Winton, a notification about millinery from Camelford, something else equally unimportant, and the letter from John, which she ought to have had three hours ago. She paused as she took it up, and turned to Parsons, who was still fluttering about the room in her alarm: “Go away,” said Kate, solemnly; “you can say I have a headache and am lying down; and, please, don’t come near me any more to-day.” “Let me come and dress you, Miss, as usual. Oh, goodness gracious me! as if I meant any harm.” “You need not stop to cry,” said Kate, severely; “but go away. You wicked woman! I owe all my trouble to you.”