him to repress, revolted against the story he had just heard from the shattered invalid within there. How right he had been, when he first heard from Hester of Katharine's flight, and had instinctively justified her, even though he then believed she had treated him so badly! So, while he was regarding her as a jilt, she was thinking that he had basely trifled with her. Poor Katharine! he pitied her. Did he pity himself? Well, not much; it was over--the glamour was gone, and he was none the worse; but she, sold to this man--a poor man now--homeless, self-exiled, with burning anger in her proud heart. He never for a moment thought of the possibility that Katharine might love him, Gordon Frere; still something he did not pause to analyse told him she did not--that the dream was over for her as for him. The waking was very different though. Father and husband lost; home and position forfeited; a wanderer, and poor. Katharine Guyon was all this. How bright was his own fate in comparison! Mr. Guyon's part in the transaction galled him. He had so heartily despised the dressy, boasting, foppish, frivolous, false old man, and had so often laughed at his little tricks and cheateries, that to have been so thoroughly, so completely _done_ by him, was, even in such distant retrospect, decidedly humiliating and unpleasant. He had that letter somewhere, with its infernal hypocritical condolence, and its coolly impudent messages from Katharine. All a lie, was it--infernal old scoundrel! Dead though, that must be remembered, even in the utmost scorn and anger. And Streightley--how he pitied him! The man knew so little of the world, and Guyon had made him so completely his tool. He liked Robert, and all the more since Hester had behaved so ill about it all. He wished now he had seen him at once, when this happened; had not been kept back by any fear of Hester's "queerness," as he called it. Things had never been quite comfortable between them since, and he had avoided the subject. But now why should he be angry with this poor broken fellow, who had lost Katharine too, if it came to that? No; he pitied him, and he would help him to the best of his ability; and now he would go and tell him so. Such is a rapid _résumé_ of Mr. Gordon Frere's thoughts as he walked round the Temple Gardens; and such was the conclusion at which he arrived before he again entered his friend's rooms.