Possibly she had been almost or quite dozing, seeing that she was so much exhausted. But she was wide awake again now. She turned upon her side with a long-drawn sigh, and stared at the hideous furniture, the ragged carpet, and the dilapidated wall-paper. It was not that they meant anything of themselves--certainly not poverty, as they might have seemed to mean to any one else. They were the result of a curious combination of contradictory characters in one family, which ultimately produced stranger results than Katharine Lauderdale’s secret marriage, some of which shall be chronicled hereafter. The idea of poverty was not associated with the absence of money in Katharine’s mind. She might be in need of a pair of new gloves, and she and her mother might go to the opera upstairs, because the stalls were too dear. But poverty! How could it enter under the roof of any who bore the name of Lauderdale? If, yesterday, she had begged uncle Robert to give her half a million, instead of refusing a hundred thousand, it was quite within the bounds of possibility that he might have written the cheque there and then. No. The shabby furniture in Katharine’s room had nothing to do with poverty, nor with the absence of money, either. It was the fatal result of certain family peculiarities concerning which the public knew nothing, and it was there, and at that moment it had a strong effect upon Katharine’s mind. It represented the dilapidation of her life, the literal dilapidation, the tearing down of one stone after another from the crowning point she had reached yesterday to the deep foundation which was laid bare as an open tomb to-day. She dwelt on the idea now, and she stared at the forlorn objects, as she had at first avoided both. Death has a strange fascination, sometimes, both for young and old people. Men and women in the prime and strength of life rarely fall under its influence. It is the refuge of those who, having seen little, believe that there is little to see, and of the others who, having seen all, have died of the sight, inwardly, and desire bodily death as the completion of experience. Let one, or both, be wrong or right; it matters little, since the facts are there. But the fascination aforesaid is stronger upon the young than upon the old. They have fewer ties, and less to keep them with the living. For the ascendant bond is weaker than the descendant in humanity, and the love of the child for its mother is not as her love for the child. It is right that it should be so. In spite of many proverbs, we know that what the child owes the parent is as nothing compared with the parent’s debt to it. Have we all found it so easy to live that we should cast stones upon heart-broken youths and maidens who would fain give back the life thrust upon them without their consent?