"You would wish me to invite Miss Gould here, you mean, my dear Ellen?" said Katharine with her most graceful air; "and you stammer about it as if I were a tigress, and you were afraid to ask so trifling a favour in your brother's house. You are a dear silly little goose,--go pluck one of your own quills, and send off your invitation to your friend immediately. Ask her for Tuesday--Lady Henmarsh comes to-morrow, and we must have her and Sir Timothy _casés_ before any one else arrives." Katharine rose as she spoke, and Ellen did the same, turning with sparkling eyes to her brother. "O, Robert, do you hear what Katharine says?" she exclaimed. "She desires me to invite Hester to Middlemeads; and I hardly dare tell you how I longed for her to come here. Is she not kind?" "Yes, indeed," said Robert; but he spoke rather absently. "She is--I am sure we shall be delighted to see Hester here." "Come, Ellen," said Katharine; "I am going to look after my hyacinths: leave your brother to his letters, and come with me." A minute later the two girls passed by the window of the room in which Robert sat, still engaged in what was apparently no pleasant task. He looked up as their voices caught his ear, drew near to the window, and followed the graceful figures with thoughtful, regretful eyes, until they disappeared. Then he sighed deeply, and gathering up his papers left the room. Half an hour later Robert sought his wife and sister in the garden, and found them in deep conversation with the gardener, a Scotchman of unparalleled skill and obstinacy. "I beg your pardon, Katharine," he said, "but I overlooked this letter this morning. It is from your father, enclosed to me, from Paris. It must have fallen out when I opened his." "Thank you," said Katharine carelessly, as she took the note from his hand and stuck it into her belt; then resumed her conversation with the gardener. Ellen felt rather surprised that Katharine could possibly defer the reading of a letter from her father, and recurred to the matter again as she sat down to her desk to enjoy the delight of sending off the longed-for invitation to Hester Gould. She had seen Mr. Guyon at his daughter's wedding, but only on that occasion, and she had not been particularly attracted by him. "Could it be possible that he was not kind to Katharine, and that she is not very fond of him?" thought the guileless Ellen, to whom any perversion of the relations and duties of life was almost inconceivable and incredible. She shook her simple head gravely at the suspicion, and then proceeded to write a gushing letter to Miss Gould, in answer to that which she had received, and in which, had she indulged a second person with its perusal, that individual would have discerned a very distinct intimation that the writer expected and exacted from Ellen that she should obtain precisely such an invitation as Katharine had so readily and gracefully suggested. CHAPTER III. HARDENING.