“Oh!” said Stella, looking at her again, “I see. Your crape’s enough, Kate, without a word. So it’s all over? Well, perhaps it is for the best. It would have made me miserable if he had refused to see me. And Charlie would have insisted--and---- Poor papa! so he’s gone--really gone. Give me a handkerchief, quick! I was, of course, partly prepared. It’s not such a shock as it might have been.” A tear fell from Stella’s eyes upon the dress which her maid was arranging. She wiped it off carefully, and then her eyes. “You see how careful I have to be now-a-days,” she said; “I can’t have my dress spotted, I haven’t too many of them _now_. Poor papa! Well, it is a good thing it has happened when I have all the distractions of the journey to take off my mind. Have you done now fumbling? Pin my veil properly. Now I’ll go on deck with you, Katherine, and we’ll watch the ship getting in, and have our talk.” “Mayn’t I kiss the baby first?” Katherine said. She had been looking at that new and wonderful thing over the chaos of the baggage, unable to get further than the cabin door. “Oh, you’ll see the baby after. Already you’re beginning to think of the baby and not of me. I knew that was how it would be,” said Stella, pettishly. She stepped over an open box, dragging down a pile of muslins as she moved. “There’s no room to turn round here. Thank heaven we’ve done with it at last. Now, Kate--Kate, tell me; it will be the first thing Charlie will want to know. Did he relent to me at the last?” “There is so much to tell you, Stella.” “Yes--yes--about his illness and all. Poor papa! I am sure I am just as sorry as if I knew all about it already. But Kate, dear, just one word. Am I cut off in the will? That is what I want to know.” “No,” said Katherine, “you are not cut off in the will.” “Hurrah!” cried Stella, clapping her hands. It was but for one second, and then she quieted down. “Oh, we have had such a time,” she cried, “and Charlie always insinuating, when he didn’t say it outright, that it was my fault, for, of course, we never, never believed, neither he nor I, that papa would have held out. And so he did come to at the end? Well, it is very hard, very hard to have been kept out of it so long but I am glad we are to have what belongs to us now. Oh--h!” cried Stella, drawing a long breath as she emerged on deck, leading the way, “here’s the old Thames again, bless it, and the fat banks; and we’re at home, and have come into our money. Hurrah!” “What are you so pleased about, Lady Somers? The first sight of ugly old England and her grey skies,” said someone who met them. The encounter sobered Stella, who paused a moment with a glance from her own coloured dress to Katherine’s crape, and a sudden sense of the necessities of the position. “They aren’t very much to be pleased about, are they?” she said. “Will you find Charlie for me, please. Tell him my sister has come to meet us, and that there’s news which he will like to hear.”