“I know that women always are imposed upon in business, where it is possible to do it,” Lady Jane said in tones of conviction. And it was with great reluctance that she went away, still with a feeling that it was somehow Katherine’s fault, if not at bottom her own, for having secretly encouraged Stella’s runaway match. “She had never thought of this,” she declared, for a moment. She had been strongly desirous that Stella should have her share, and she knew that Katherine would have given her her share. As for Stella’s actions, no one could answer for them. She might have a generous impulse or she might not; and Charlie Somers, he was always agape for money. If he had the Duke of Westminster’s revenues he would still open his mouth for more. “But you may be sure I shall put their duty very plainly before them,” she said. “Oh, don’t, please don’t,” cried Katherine. “I do not want to have anything from Stella’s pity--I am not to be pitied at all. I have a very sufficient income of my own.” “A very sufficient income--for Mr. Tredgold’s daughter!” cried Lady Jane, and she hurried away biting her lips to prevent a string of evil names as long as her arm bursting from them. The old wretch! the old brute! the old curmudgeon! were a few of the things she would have liked to say. But it does not do to scatter such expressions about a man’s house before he has been buried a week. These are decorums which are essential to the very preservation of life. Then Katherine’s mind turned to the other side of the question, and she thought of herself as Stella’s pensioner, of living on sufferance in Stella’s house, with a portion of Stella’s money substracted from the rest for her benefit. It would have been just the same had it been she who had endowed Stella, as she had intended, and given her the house and the half of the fortune. The same, and yet how different. Stella would have taken everything her sister had given, and waited and craved for more. But to Katherine it seemed impossible that she should take anything from Stella. It would be charity, alms, a hundred ugly things; it would have been mere and simple justice, as she would have felt it had the doing of it been in her own hands. But it was not with any of these feelings, it was with the happiness of real affection in seeing her sister again, and the excitement of a great novelty and change and of a new chapter of life quite different from all that she had known before, and probably better, more happy, more comforting than any of her anticipations, that she set out next day to meet Stella and to bring her home. CHAPTER XXXIX.