“And I should like, I confess, to see you happily married, my dear,” said Lady Jane impressively. “I don’t think I know any girl whom I should be more glad to see settled; but don’t turn away from an honest, plain man. That is the sort of man that suits a girl like you best. You are not a butterfly, and your husband shouldn’t be of the butterfly kind. A butterfly man is a dreadful creature, Katherine, when he outgrows his season and gets old. There’s Algy Scott, for example, my own cousin, who admired you very much--you would tire of him in a week, my dear, or any of his kind; they would bore you to death in ten days.” “I have no desire, Lady Jane, to try how long it would take to be bored to death by----” “And you are very wise,” Lady Jane said. “Come and let’s look at the aloe and see how much it has unfolded since _that_ night. And is it quite certain, Katherine, that you must go to-morrow? Well, you have had a very dull visit, and I have done nothing but bore you with my dull advice. But Sir John will be broken-hearted to lose you, and you will always find the warmest welcome at Steephill. Friends are friends, my dear, however dull they may be.” Katherine went home with her whole being in a state of animation, which is always a good thing for the mind even when it is produced by disagreeable events. The spirit of men, and naturally of women also, is apt to get stagnant in an undisturbed routine, and this had been happening to her day by day in the home life which so many things had concurred to make motionless. The loss of Stella, the double break with society, in the first place on that account, in the second because of the Rector, her partial separation from Steephill on one side and from the village on the other, had been, as it were, so many breakages of existence to Katherine, who had not sufficient initiative or sufficient position to make any centre for herself. Now the ice that had been gathered over her was broken in a multitude of pieces, if not very agreeably, yet with advantage to her mind. Katherine reflected with no small sense of contrariety and injustice of the continued comparison with Stella which apparently was to weigh down all her life. Lady Jane had invited her, not for her own attractiveness--though she did not doubt that Lady Jane’s real sentiment at bottom was, as she said, one of partiality for Katherine--but to be put into the way she should go in respect to Stella and kept up to her duty. That Stella should not suffer, that she should eventually be secured in her fortune, that was the object of all her friends. It was because he would be favourable to Stella that Lady Jane had thrust Dr. Burnet upon her, indicating him almost by name, forcing her, as it were, into his arms. Did Dr. Burnet in the same way consider that he was acting in Stella’s interests when he made himself agreeable to her sister? Katherine’s heart--a little wounded, sore, mortified in pride and generosity (as if she required to