“But there are people coming to dinner to-morrow,” Lady Jane said. There was something in the little nod she gave, of satisfaction and knowingness, which Katherine did not understand or attempt to understand. No idea of Dr. Burnet was associated with Steephill. She was not aware that he was on visiting terms there--he had told her that he attended the servants’ hall--so that it was with a little start of surprise that, raising her eyes from a book she was looking at, she found him standing before her, holding out his hand as the guests gathered before dinner. The party was from the neighbourhood--county, or, at least, country people--and when Dr. Burnet was appointed to take Katherine in to dinner, that young lady, though she knew the doctor so well and liked him so much, did not feel that it was any great promotion. She thought she might have had somebody newer, something that belonged less to her own routine of existence, which is one of the mistakes often made by very astute women of the world like Lady Jane. There was young Fortescue, for instance, a mere fox-hunting young squire, not half so agreeable as Dr. Burnet, whom Katherine would have preferred. “He is an ass; he would not amuse her in the very least,” Lady Jane had said. But Sir John, who was not clever at all, divined that something new, though an ass, would have amused Katherine more. Besides, Lady Jane had her motives, which she mentioned to nobody. Dr. Burnet did the very best for himself that was possible. He gave Katherine a report of her father, he told her the last thing that had transpired at Sliplin since her departure, he informed her who all the people were at table, pleased to let her see that he knew them all. “That’s young Fortescue who has just come in to his estate, and he promises to make ducks and drakes of it,” Dr. Burnet said. Katherine looked across the table at the young man thus described. She was not responsible for him in any way, nor could it concern her if he did make ducks and drakes of his estate, but she would have preferred to make acquaintance with those specimens of the absolutely unknown. A little feeling suddenly sprang up in her heart against Dr. Burnet, because he was Dr. Burnet and absolutely above reproach. She would have sighed for Dr. Burnet, for his quick understanding and the abundance he had to say, had she been seated at young Fortescue’s side. After dinner, when she had talked a little to all the ladies and had done her duty, Lady Jane caught Katherine’s hand and drew her to a seat beside herself, and then she beckoned to Dr. Burnet, who drew a chair in front of them and sat down, bending forward till his head, Katherine thought, was almost in Lady Jane’s lap. “I want,” she said, “Katherine, to get Dr. Burnet on our side--to make him take up our dear Stella’s interests as you do, my dear, and as in my uninfluential way I should like to do too.”