Her feelings towards her father were of a mixed, and, on the whole, of an unsatisfactory character; such as any one watching the girl with anxiety and experience must have recognised with regret. She was fond of him after a fashion, and there was a good deal of _camaraderie_ between them; but she had an intuitive distrust of him, and she knew instinctively that all his indulgence, all his flattery, all his yielding to her wishes and furnishing her pleasures, were superficial compliances. He liked the kind of life she liked; she knew him well enough, without formally reasoning upon her knowledge, to feel convinced that if their tastes or wishes clashed in any way, hers and not his would be expected, if not obliged, to yield. She admired her father's pleasant manners and social talents; she had but rarely any opportunity of contrasting his fulfilment of the paternal relation with that of other men; and she was full of youth, health, spirits, and capacity for the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure that offered; so she went her way carelessly and joyously, and reasoned little upon the present or the future. Katharine and her father were not real friends, but they were always technically "good friends;" a result to which the underlying violence of the girl's nature no doubt unconsciously conduced. Mr. Guyon hated trouble and detested scenes; and he had a tolerably correct occult sense that he might find himself "in for" both if he interfered much with Katharine: consequently he did not interfere; and as she was totally in the dark respecting his pecuniary circumstances, and never asked any troublesome questions, they got on very well together. Real companionship they had none, but they did not miss it; and while her father's chief anxiety about Katharine was that she should make a good match before she "went off" in looks--a good match implying a rich son-in-law, conveniently indifferent about settlements, and ready to "do" bills to any reasonable or unreasonable amount--Katharine's chief anxiety about him was, that he should dye his hair and whiskers with greater success, and drink less wine on evenings when he went to parties with her. She knew he was proud of her beauty, and thought her "doosid good company;" but she did not for a moment imagine he had any sentimental love for her; indeed she fancied he had not much feeling, for he had never mentioned her mother to her in his life. Their relation, in fact, was pleasant, hollow, and heathen; and when Katharine abandoned herself to her newborn love for Gordon Frere, she never thought of her father's feelings or wishes in the matter, or had a more dutiful notion in her mind than that it "made it pleasant that papa liked his coming about the house." You see she was no exceptional being, no angel alighted for a little on a sphere unworthy of her footsteps and her wings; but an interesting, captivating, self-willed woman,--such as circumstances had made her; a woman whose weaknesses were as