It was no sacrifice to Katharine to leave town; but if it had been one, she would not have hesitated to make it. It was therefore at Middlemeads, in the tranquil enjoyment of her beautiful home, invested with all the first golden glory of the autumn, that Katharine learned the news, the great news, which lent eloquence to Ellen Streightley's pen, and caused her to "gush" on paper as she was wont to do in speech. It was not, however, to her ingenuous sister-in-law that Katharine owed her knowledge of the brilliancy of the marriage, the number and importance of the guests, the details of the bride's dress, the high spirits of the bridegroom, the _itinéraire_ of the bridal tour, and the winter plans of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Frere. When the event had taken place, and Lady Henmarsh's occupation as a chaperone was for the second time gone; when she had inspected and sufficiently admired the costly set of rubies which she had received as a parting gift from the heiress, and had declared that she detested weddings, and was tired to death, she could think of no more agreeable way of passing an idle evening than in writing to Mrs. Streightley. Her letter was very smart, clever, and skilful, as all her letters were; and if it did not wound Katharine's feelings so much as the writer intended, its failure was to be imputed to a change in her mind and feelings, of which Lady Henmarsh was entirely ignorant. The engagement had not been a long one; neither party had had any motive for delay; but it was by quite an accidental coincidence that Gordon Frere and Hester Gould were married on the anniversary of Katharine Guyon's wedding-day. CHAPTER IX. MARRIED TO MONEY. The time, so often deferred, at which Mr. Guyon was to pay his first visit to his daughter in her country-house had at length arrived; and the old gentleman made his appearance at Middlemeads with all the advantages of a very juvenile toilet and a new stock of those adjuncts to his personal beauty which he was in the habit of carrying about with him. It was not without reluctance that Mr. Guyon bade adieu to London, which he was accustomed to speak of as "the little village," and its delights; but he felt it absolutely necessary to make himself personally acquainted with that country-house which he had so often depicted to his boon companions in the most glowing terms, and with those country families whom, to the same confidants, he had represented as revelling in the elegant and unostentatious hospitality of the British merchant. He had been a little chaffed by these friends about the calm manner in which his daughter had borne his long-continued separation from her. Some of them compared him to King Lear, some to Captain Costigan; and Mr. Guyon, who knew very little about either of the historical personages between whom and himself a comparison was instituted, thought it was "dam' low," and that the sooner all chance of a repetition of such joking was put a stop to the better.