One March night of 1798 was Katherine's coming-out ball. And her father's hopes looked like fulfilment, for the greatest of Kentish peers, the young Marquis of Dover, had been spending week after week at his mansion of Pegwell, where never within the memory of the countryside, which noted all his doings, had he spent two days on end. And Katherine in a ball-room was a witch. She danced as such women do, light-footed and tireless, radiating health and high spirits, and with the unconscious smile of conquest on their lips, until the victor comes who makes them replace it with the most exquisite gentleness. People looked to see that in Lady Katherine, before the night was dead, for Ralph, Marquis of Dover, Earl of River, Viscount Ripple, and Baron Waldershare, all in the Peerage of England, and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Kent. For he was a fine man, who rode straight to hounds, and had already climbed high in the Government, and Katherine had shown herself well inclined to him. * * * * * The great minuet was to be at midnight, and Katherine was promised to Lord Dover for it. In his fine scarlet uniform of Lord Lieutenant, he was already waiting for her in the door of the great barn with transepts like a church, which had been turned into a ball-room, decked with the trophies of Lord Eastry's wars. For in another two or three minutes the first stroke would clang from the tower of Eastry's little Norman church. Katherine had been up to her room,--she had girlish vanity enough to wish to look her best in the great minuet,--and now she was stepping down the stairway with an eloquent hesitancy, her left hand clearing from her lovely feet the heavy shimmery satin, which, young as she was, it seemed natural for such an imperial woman to wear. Dividing the line between her beautiful throat and her shoulders, were the famous pearls that were the trophy of Lord Eastry's wildest exploit. Who could doubt but that when she went out from that minuet, it would be to have the greatest name in all the kingdom of Kent offered for her keeping? But suddenly, through the open, ivy-shrouded Elizabethan pane at the turn of the stair, came a low voice,--a young voice, with the low distinctness which I shall never forget,--"Kitty Fleet, Kitty Fleet, is it you, Kitty Fleet?" A light came over the girl's face, which, I am prepared to swear, the great Marquess of Dover had never seen, as she replied, "Hush, Will! keep in the shadow, and I'll come--but only for a minute."