"Why didn't you come and meet him the other evening?" continued Marion. "He seemed so disappointed. So was I; I wanted you to come, for lots of reasons. I get so bored when I am left alone with him! I like him ever so much better if there is some one else there; and you are the only girl I know who would be safe not to flirt with him. Bobby said, only the other day, that you were much too nice to flirt with. And girls are so mean, sometimes,--aren't they? I was really sorry when you refused." "If you had told me the real reason for your invitation, instead of the conventional one, I might have made more effort to come," said Katharine. "You old dear, don't be sarcastic; I never can endure sarcasm. But you will come next time, won't you? Oh, dear, I am forgetting all about your own trouble; what a selfish wretch I am! Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?" "Nothing, thanks; at least, nothing I would let you do." "Sure? Well, let me know if there is. Are you really very gone on him, Kitty?" "Please don't," said Katharine. "All right, I won't. But I wish you would try a course of boys for a time; it would make you feel so much happier. They're so fresh and harmless." "Even when they shoot themselves?" said Katharine. "Oh, that's only Bobby. Must you really go? You old dear, you have done me such a lot of good. What is it, Williams?" Mr. Wilton was in the library, the man announced, and would be glad to see either Mrs. Keeley or her daughter for a moment, and he would rather not come upstairs, as he was in a hurry. Marion gave a petulant little stamp. "Oh, send mamma to him! How like Paul, not to care which of us he sees! Just fancy, if it were Tommy, now! Stop, though, show him up here, Williams. You will be able to congratulate him, Kitty; it will put him in a good humour. Oh, nonsense! you can wait just for that, and I haven't anything to say to him that he hasn't heard hundreds of times before." So Katharine found herself shaking hands with him once more, and congratulating him on being engaged to her cousin, Marion Keeley. She had not seen him since the night of the thunderstorm, when he had stood in the old doorway in Essex Court, with the lamplight on his face. "You are very good; it is kind of you to take so much interest," he was saying with frigid politeness. They were silent after that, and Marion said she was sure they must have crowds to talk about, and she would go upstairs and ask her mother about Lady Suffolk's drawing-room meeting; and they both made perfectly futile efforts to keep her in the room, and were ashamed of having made them when she had gone, and they were left to face the situation alone. "I suppose," said Paul, with an effort, "that your holidays will soon be beginning?" "They have begun to-day," said Katharine. "This is the first day--of my last holidays." "Your--last holidays?" She felt, without seeing, that he had looked up sharply at her.