"Yes--and it is deserved; the girl is one in a thousand. I think I shall encourage Sir John for her; he is longing for a wife, and has a tidy seven thousand a year, and only rare attacks of gout. She could manage him capitally and be of real use to the party. She will never let her heart interfere with her ambitions!" "He would make an ideal husband!" Mr. Strobridge's tone was sardonic. "A lover in that case would be an immediate necessity--by all means, Seraphim, press the match!" Her Ladyship gave him one of her shrewd glances and then she said: "Come and breakfast with me in my sitting-room to-morrow morning, G. We can talk it over," and she chuckled softly. When Katherine sat by her fire an hour later she set herself to look carefully over the last five months of her life, and to mark what they had brought her. The gain was immense! She had emerged from being an ordinary shorthand typist at Liv and Dev's to be an inmate of the house in Berkeley Square, and from that to be the passion of Gerard Strobridge, and the valued companion of Lady Garribardine at Blissington. And now she had spent the evening almost as their equal and had heard twenty eminent people all talking the shibboleth of the great world of politics and fashion; and had not felt totally out of place in their company, which she knew was not composed of the agreeable fools of the Christmas party, but contained several politicians of distinction, a diplomat or two and a foreign ambassador. The contrast was delightful to think about; it even gave her pleasure to recall Bindon's Green as a foil! She laughed without any bitterness to herself when she remembered the bath and the oyster incidents, and several others of the Lord Algy Period--and how she had secretly admired the "rather awful" rooms at the Great Terminus Hotel; her eye and her taste then so totally uneducated that in spite of many walks in museums, she had not been able to distinguish her deplorable deficiencies in both respects. Oh! What an immeasurable gulf now separated her from those days! It was a praiseworthy achievement for only five months. But she realised more than ever from the conversations she had heard to-night that she was still very ignorant, and that constant mixing with this society would be the only way to give her that polish and confidence which could enable her to display the really cultivated thoughts of her mind. The quickness and lightness with which subtle and clever sallies were answered--the perfect ease of everyone! She knew that she was able to control her own face and manner to appear at ease, but she could not pretend that she felt so altogether as yet, except with Gerard Strobridge, but then Gerard, while her literary master, was her worshipping servant--so that was different!