"Then it is perfectly useless my talking, I see that. We had better go and have some tea." And so they turned out of Albert Gate and walked to Victoria. Matilda, when she had smoothed her ruffled feelings, began now to relate the home news. Gladys and her fiancé were not happy together; they had not been so since that visit which Katherine would remember they had taken to Brighton to stay with his aunt--it was nearly six weeks ago now and both grew more and more gloomy. "And so uppy as Glad is with Fred, too, and never a bit back on Bob Hartley!" Matilda felt things would be better for her sister if a little more spirit were shown. Mabel and her betrothed had been up for church parade as usual in the Park that morning, and this lady had also supped with them at Laburnum Villa the night before, and they had had oysters and a jolly time. Katherine felt a strange emotion when she heard of this. She seemed to see a picture of Lord Algy enjoying oysters, and all the reflections this action had called up--oh! how long ago it all appeared! "And have you met that gentlemen you spoke of?" Matilda asked, before they parted at the station. "Mr. Strobridge, you mean--Lady Garribardine's nephew. Yes--he is husband of the lady Glad dresses, the one who had the model she wanted me to have. He is a clever man--we have not really spoken yet, but I mean to know him very well some day." "Oh! Kitten, do be careful! And him a married man, too!" "For what I want of him, it does not matter whether he is married or single," Katherine reassured her, and soon the train moved off. How good Matilda was! Katherine thought, as she walked briskly back to Berkeley Square--an unselfish, worthy, honest, hopelessly stupid creature, whom somehow she was fond of. But what could it be that made her herself so utterly different from them all? Nothing could be chance--everything had its reason, only we were generally too blind to perceive it. So was there some truth in that vague story of the great-grandmother having been someone of high family fallen low in the world and married to the auctioneer great-grandfather, whom her own father remembered very well? Could it be that some drop of gentle blood flowed in her veins, transmitted from this source and concentrated in her, having escaped the others--or was it simply from the years of her reading that her mind had developed? But it could not be altogether that, because she remembered instincts and tastes in uneducated early childhood completely aloof from the family's. "Father gave me this business capacity," she mused, "but something beyond must have given me this will to achieve--and I _shall_ achieve--all I desire--in time! Only I must be ruthless and have no emotions. I must follow what Bacon asserts about great spirits," and she quoted softly: "'There is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion.'"