good manners patent to all observers. But in that one fact lay the only important item of knowledge, in the estimation of Lady Henmarsh. Gordon Frere was a poor man, with no income to speak of, and only very desultory, undefined, and contingent expectations. Clearly this would not meet either Mr. Guyon's views or her own. She hoped, she trusted, nay she believed, that Katharine would not be so infatuated as to think of marrying Frere; she trusted Frere was too much a man of the world to think of marrying Katharine. It was only a flirtation,--it must be only a flirtation; but even that, if she carried it to such an extent as she had done at the ball, Katharine must be induced to give up. It would be remarked, it would keep off other men: of course it was quite foolish to be afraid of any thing serious; so Lady Henmarsh hoped, and trusted, and believed, and yet she doubted and feared. She did not altogether like to acknowledge to herself, perhaps, how little confidence she felt in her own power of "inducing" Katharine to do any thing which did not accord with her own inclination and humour. The tie between them was formed of mutual complaisance, not of influence and respect. Lady Henmarsh did not understand either the strength of Katharine's feelings or the determination of her temper; she had never seen either roused into action, and she regarded her as rather shrewder and more worldly-minded than most girls, as well as cleverer and better-looking. So, though she knew her to be self-willed, she calculated on her sense and shrewdness overcoming her obstinacy in a matter in which her worldliness would teach her that obstinacy was injurious and misplaced. Lady Henmarsh pondered these things one fine summer's day, while Katharine rambled about the Botanical Gardens with Gordon Frere and others; while every glance caught from his blue eyes, and every sentence intoned especially for her ear by his earnest musical voice, bound the girl's heart more closely to him, and rendered the task which Lady Henmarsh proposed to herself more difficult of fulfilment, more infructuous in result. "At all events, it shall not go on like this beyond to-night," said her ladyship to herself: "if she looks at and dances with him as she did at Mrs. Pendarvis's, I shall tell Ned Guyon about it, and find out what he thinks; but my decided opinion is that it is full time _some_ steps were taken." And then she went to visit Sir Timothy.