This it was that made her drop the Tredgolds “like a hot potato.” She who had taken such an interest in the girls, and superintended Stella’s _début_ as if she had been a girl of her own, retreated from Katherine as if from the plague. After the way they had behaved to poor dear Charlie Somers and his wife, she said, she could have no more to do with them. Lady Jane had been their great patroness, their only effectual connection with the county and its grandeurs, so that the higher society of the island was cast off at once from Katherine. I do not think she felt it very much, or was even conscious for a long time that she had lost anything. But still it was painful and surprising to her to be dismissed with a brief nod, and “How d’ye do?” in passing, from Lady Jane. She was troubled to think what she could have done to alienate a woman whom she had always liked, and who had professed, as Katherine knew, to think the elder sister the superior of the younger. That, however, was of course a mere _façon de parler_, for Stella had always been, Katherine reminded herself, the attraction to the house. People might even approve of herself more, but it was Stella who was the attraction--Stella who shocked and disturbed, and amused and delighted everybody about; who was always inventing new things, festive surprises and novelties, and keeping a whirl of life in the place. The neighbours gave their serious approval to Katherine, but she did not amuse them or surprise. They never had to speculate what she would do next. They knew (she said to herself) that she would always do just the conventional proper thing, whereas Stella never could be calculated upon, and had a perpetual charm of novelty. Katherine was not sufficiently enlightened to be aware that Stella’s way in its wildness was much the more conventional of the two.