"No one is good enough for them, curse them!" he said over the little note. "They won't give me a chance of winning her. I'm not beaten yet though!" But he was. Early in January Minnie Newton took cold, drooped in the chilly dreariness of the old house, and died before the spring came in. One day Kate Rothwell came upon Hayes as he lingered, a melancholy little figure, by the girl's grave. "Ah, Miss Rothwell," he said, looking up at her, "I wanted to have had the right to care for her and mourn her, but it was not to be!" "No," said Kate. "I'm sorry," she added, after a moment. It was just at the time when she herself was about to defy all the barren traditions of the Rothwells to marry Sidney Harding with his brilliant prospects of wealth. Harding's half-brother, who had made the great business, was pleased with the match, and promised Sidney a partnership in a couple of years. Everything was bright for Kate, and she could afford a regretful thought to poor Hayes. "I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was hard, but the slightest proffer of sympathy was enough. "Ah! I knew you wished me well--God bless you!" said the little man, "and help you as you would have helped me!" Perhaps Kate Rothwell felt that at that rate Providence would not take any very active interest in her affairs. She turned aside impatiently. "Pray keep your thanks for some one who deserves them, Mr. Hayes. I don't." "You could not do anything, but I know you were good to _her_. She told me, that afternoon----" He spoke in just the proper tone of emotion. "Nonsense!" Kate answered, sharply. "How could she? there was nothing to tell." Mr. Hayes might well say, even a quarter of a century later, that Miss Rothwell had an unpleasant manner. Nevertheless she held a place in that idealised picture of his love which in his old age served him for a memory. In Sidney Harding's death, within a year of the marriage, he saw a kindred stroke to that which had robbed him of his own hope, and he never thought of Kate without a touch of sentimental loyalty. When he met Kate's son that October afternoon, with the familiar face and voice, on his way to Mitchelhurst, he had felt that, Rothwell though he was, he must be welcomed for his mother's sake. And yet it had almost seemed as if it were John Rothwell himself come back to sneer in a new fashion.