“Yes, dear Aggie, I am. I don’t think things as bad as you say. For instance,” and a wonderful recovery would reassure suspicion. The real core of her life was Katherine and Katherine’s future. There was to be, one day, for Katherine a most splendid suitor—a Lord, perhaps, a great politician, a great Churchman, she did not know—but someone who would realise first Katherine’s perfection, secondly the honour of being made a Trenchard, thirdly the necessity of spending all his life in the noble work of making Katherine happy. “I shall miss her—we shall all miss her—but we mustn’t be selfish—hum, hum—she’ll have one to stay, perhaps.” Very often she came peeping into Katherine’s room as she came to-day. She would take Katherine into her confidence; she would offer her opinion about the events of the hour. She took her stand in the middle of the room, giving little excited pecks at one of her fingers, the one that suffered most from her needle when she sewed, a finger scarred now by a million little stabs. So she stood now, and Katherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, looked up at her. “I came in, my dear, because you hardly ate any luncheon. I watched you—hardly any at all.” “Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Betty. I wasn’t hungry.” “I don’t like your not eating—hum, hum. No, I don’t. Mother always used to say ‘Don’t Eat, can’t Beat’—of military forces, you know, dear, or anything that had a hard task to perform.” She looked about her with an aimless and rather nervous smile, which meant that she had something to say but was afraid of it. “Katie, dear, do you know?” (This with an air of intense importance.) “I don’t think I’ll show Millie my room—not just at first at any rate.” “Oh, but you must. She’ll be longing to see it.” “Well, but—will she, do you think? Oh, no, she won’t, not after Paris.... Paris is so grand. Perhaps, later I will—show it her. I mean when she’s more accustomed to the old life.” But even now it was plain that she had not delivered her purpose. It was imprisoned, like a mouse in a very woolly moth-eaten trap. Soon there will be a click and out it will come! Her wandering, soft, kindly eyes looked gravely upon Katherine. “My dear, I wish you’d eaten something. Only a little mince and two of those cheese biscuits.... Katie dear, did you hear what Mr. Mark said at luncheon about leaving us?” “Yes, Aunt Betty.” “He said he’d got somewhere from next Monday. Poor young man—not _so_ young now either—but he seems lonely. I’m glad we were able to be kind to him at first. Katie, I have an ‘Idea’.” Impossible to give any picture of the eagerness with which now her eyes were lit and her small body strung on a tiptoe of excitement, “I have an idea.... I think he and Millie—I think he might be just the man for Millie—adventurous, exciting, knowing so much about Russia—and, after Paris, she’ll want someone like that.”