She rose as she spoke and gave Katherine a look--- a look significant, malicious, such as any spectator might have read. Stanford had risen to open the door, and perhaps he did not see it, but it left Katherine so hot with angry feeling, so ashamed and indignant, that he could not fail but perceive it when Stella had gone away. He looked at her a little wistfully as he took his seat again. “I fear I am detaining you here against your will,” he said. “Oh, no,” said Katherine, from the mist of her confusion, “it is nothing. Stella has not yet got over the excitement of coming home. It has been increased very much by some--incidents which she did not expect. You have heard her story of course? They--eloped--and my father was supposed to have cut her off and put her out of his will; but it appears, on the contrary, that he has left everything to her. She only heard of papa’s death, and of--this--when she got home.” There was a little pause, and then he said reflectively, with a curious sort of regret, as if this brief narrative touched himself at some point, “It seems, then, that fortune after all favours the brave.” “The brave?” said Katherine, surprised. “Oh, you mean because of their running away? They have paid for it, they think, very severely in seven years of poverty in India, but now--now Stella’s turn has come.” “I quite understand Lady Somers’ excitement without that. Even for myself, this house has so many recollections. The mere thought of it makes my heart beat when I am thousands of miles away. When I first came, an uncouth boy--you will scarcely remember that, Miss Tredgold.” “Oh, I remember very well,” said Katherine, gradually recovering her ease, and pleased with a suggestion of recollections so early that there could be no embarrassment in them; “but not the uncouthness. We were very glad to have you for a play-fellow, Stella and I.” “She was a little round ball of a girl,” he said. “But even then,” said Katherine, and paused. She had been about to say, “expected to be the first,” but changed her expression, “was the favourite of everybody,” she said. “Ah,” said Stanford, and then pursued his recollections. “I used to count the days till I could come back. And then came the next stage. Your father was kind to me when I was a boy. Afterwards, he was quite right, he wanted to know what I was good for.” “He was what people call practical,” said Katherine. “Fortunately, he did not think it necessary with us. We were accepted as useless creatures, _objets de luxe_, which a rich man could afford to keep up, and which did him more credit the gayer they were and the more costly. Poor papa! It is not for us to criticise him, Mr. Stanford, in his own house.”