"Yes, we saw him yesterday at the Botanical Fête. I don't know that he mentioned your invitation. Katharine, did Mr. Frere say whether he was to dine with Lady Henmarsh to-day?" Katharine turned her head quickly towards her father, and there was a slight frown on her fair brow as she answered, "No, papa,--certainly not! I did not know he had been asked. When did you invite him, Lady Henmarsh?" "Several days ago, Kate;--when I asked you all. I suppose he had something better to do; and really he is so horribly conceited, and represents himself as in such request every where, he is quite welcome to stay away for me." The matter dropped there, but Katharine was very silent now; and Mr. Mostyn, attributing her depression to the near termination of dinner, and the inevitable move, decided that her pensive tenderness was even more charming than her sparkling allurement. In the drawing-room she was silent still. When opportunity offered she said to Lady Henmarsh: "How did you send Mr. Frere your invitation?" "How? Why, Kate, how inquisitive you are!" and her ladyship laughed,--rather a forced laugh;--"by post, of course. To the Temple; that's all right, isn't it? I said, to meet a few friends, the Guyons, and one or two others. But, my child, I can't stay gossipping with you; there's Mrs. Weldon preparing to consider herself neglected and to take offence." Katharine was not so much annoyed as she was puzzled by this incident. It is hardly necessary to tell the intelligent reader that no such invitation had ever been sent to Gordon Frere, and that the fabrication had been a happy idea of Mr. Guyon's, and hurriedly imparted to his colleague by a note before dinner. Frere's absence might be very short, and was undoubtedly very precious; and Mr. Guyon had determined to play a game which, if not exactly desperate, was very daring. This was the first card; he had played it, not with perfect, but with tolerable, success. With increased eagerness Katharine looked forward to the morrow; with such eagerness as took the healthy colour from her cheek and the limpid brightness from her eye, and replaced the one by a flickering flush, and the other by a look of anxiety and absorption. The morrow came, and she rode in the Park with her father, but did not see Gordon Frere. The routine of a London day followed; she drove out with Mrs. Stanbourne, and on her return looked over the cards which had been left during her absence, but there was not one bearing the name she longed to see. At dinner her father was in the gay spirits which had distinguished him since he had made Robert Streightley's acquaintance, and took no notice of her silence and dejection. She went to Lady Tredgold's reception, and there endured such pangs of expectation, suspense, mortification and anger, love and longing, as only a mind totally undisciplined by sorrow, and unaccustomed to finding its calculations disturbed by conflicting results, could undergo.