unmanageable girl, whom she had always loved, and for whom she had always been apprehensive, with the well-grounded fear which is taught by experience and the knowledge of the human heart; with that fear which can hardly fail to be awakened when one who has travelled far on the journey of life looks back and sees the young beginner joyously setting forth in delusive hope, and with the courage of ignorance. The prompt invitation to Middlemeads by which Katharine replied to Mrs. Stanbourne's notification of her arrival in England was all that it should have been, in words; and the acceptance was as prompt and affectionate. "This day week, then, she will be here," Katharine said to herself, as she sat before her writing-table with the letter in her hand. "This day week. I am glad the house is likely to be so full--I don't want to be alone with her. It is all so unlike her ideas--and she is so quick." Here Katharine sighed. "Well, after all, she knows I always liked money, and what money gives one in this world--and she knows I never was romantic. It's all very gay and splendid here; and if I don't care quite so much about it as I used to think I should--I must be a worse actress than I think I am, if she finds that out. One thing at least she does not know, and can never discover; one secret is at least inviolably my own. No one can ever guess that I cherished the delusion of love and truth, of a life lived for their sake; a life lived with a man who amused himself all the time, who made me love him _pour rire_."