she administered to several would-be consolers. He kept apart with conscious skill; and yet, when he happened to be thrown absolutely in her way, was very full of attention and care for her comfort. He placed her seat just as he thought she liked it, arranged her footstool for her with the most anxious devotion, and was just retiring behind her chair when she stopped him, struck by his melancholy looks. “Are you ill, Mr Huntley?” she said, with something like solicitude; and Fred shook his head, fixing his eyes on her face. “No,” he said, “I am not ill;” and then drew a little apart, and looked down upon her with a certain pathos in his eyes. “There is something the matter with you,” said Kate. “Well, perhaps there is; and I should have said there was something the matter with you, Miss Crediton, which is of a great deal more importance.” “Mine is easily explained,” said Kate; “I have lost my friend. I am always low when Madeline goes away. We have always been such friends since we were babies. There is nobody in the world I am so intimate with. And it is so nice to have some one you can talk to and say everything that comes into your head. I am always out of spirits when she goes away.” “If the post is vacant I wish I might apply for it,” Fred said, with exaggerated humility. “I think I should make an excellent confidant. Discreet and patient and ready to sympathise, and not at all given to offering impertinent advice.” “Ah, you!” cried Kate, with a sudden glance up at him. And then she laughed, notwithstanding her depressed condition. “I wonder what Lady Winton would say?” she added merrily, but the next moment grew very red and felt confused under his eye; for what if he should try to find out what Lady Winton had said?--which, of course, he immediately attempted to do. “Lady Winton is a great friend of mine. She would never give her vote against me,” said Fred, cunningly disarming his adversary. Upon which Kate indulged herself in another mischievous laugh. Did he but know! “She is not like you,” said the girl in her temerity; “she is rather fond of giving advice.” “Yes,” said Fred, growing bold. “That was what she was doing last night. Would you like me to tell you what it was about?” “What it was about?” cried Kate, in consternation, with a violent sudden blush; but of course it must be nonsense, she represented to herself, looking at him with a certain anxiety. “You never could guess, Mr Huntley; it was something quite between ourselves.” “That is very possible,” he said, so gravely that her fears were quite silenced; and he added in another moment, “but I know very well what it was. It was about me.” “About you!” “I have known Lady Winton a great many years,” said Fred, steadily. “I understand her ways. When she comes and takes a man’s place and sends him off for something she has left behind on purpose, he must be dull indeed if he does not know what she means. She was talking to you of me.”