Katharine had to bear this sort of thing, and she bore it well, wondering sometimes that it did not pain her more keenly. She gave little heed to Lady Henmarsh's hints about Hester Gould, which she imputed to a general impulse of spite; and simply contented herself with smiling rather bitterly as she thought how accurately they would once have hit their mark. When she met Gordon Frere now, there was no glamour between her eyes and him. He was not invested with the golden halo of a girl's fancy. The time which had gone over Katharine's head, though brief in duration, had been long in meaning, and she was no longer the slave of her imagination. She saw him as he really was--a pleasant, kindly, genial, well-bred, well-looking, shallow young man, with brains enough and heart enough for the exigencies of society, and admirably fitted to be rich and idle, with distinction and popularity. She knew now that he was not a man who would ever accomplish any great or noble purpose in life; not a man on whom a woman's heart could stay itself in trouble. Somehow she felt that she had outgrown and outlived Gordon Frere. While one woman, to whom he had been the incarnation of the fondest and fairest visions of youth, was thus thinking of Mr. Frere, he had assumed a position of immense importance in the estimation of another--a woman widely different from Katharine in every thing. When Hester Gould met him at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball, she had been attracted towards him chiefly by curiosity. She remembered him well as the fair-haired young man whom she had seen at the memorable promenade, and whom she had immediately discerned to be Katharine Guyon's lover. She strongly suspected that he and the girl had both been victims of some foul play, the full details of which her subsequent acquaintance with the affairs of Mr. Guyon and his son-in-law had not enabled her to ascertain; but that he, at least, had suffered at Mr. Guyon's unscrupulous hands she did not doubt. Gordon had heard that the "old cat," as he had irreverently called Lady Henmarsh on a former occasion, was "taking a new heiress about with her;" for such was the simple phrase in which the ingenuous youth of his set described Hester's relations with her friend; and when, on his paying his respects to Lady Henmarsh at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball, she had presented him to Miss Gould, he concluded, as he led his partner to the dancing-room, that she was the "new heiress" in question. Thus he too felt some curiosity about the girl, whose tranquil easy manner, keen dark eyes, elegant and tasteful dress, and conversation utterly free from the missishness and the vapidity common to young ladies just "out," made her an interesting person, apart from the very large fortune which she undoubtedly possessed, and which was multiplied by rumour with its accustomed liberality. Gordon would have been considerably astonished, had he known that Miss Gould saw the glance