“You sent me a letter from your late father--Mr. Massarene?” he said--his voice seemed strangled in his throat. “I enclosed one some time ago, yes.” “I have only now received it. I have been away yachting. Nothing was forwarded.” His words came with difficulty; he spoke like a man to whom what he is obliged to say is torture. “It does not concern me,” she said coldly. “I have no wish to know what it contained.” “You must know,” said Ronald. “It contained a signature of my sister of Otterbourne, who, it appears from another paper enclosed with it, owed to your father the enormous sum of twelve thousand pounds.” Katherine was silent: she thought that probably the Duchess of Otterbourne had owed very much more than that to her father. Hurstmanceaux breathed heavily: he was overwhelmed with shame at what he was forced to say. “Apparently,” he continued, “she owed this amount to Beaumont, the jeweler in the Rue de la Paix. Your father sent me Beaumont’s receipt to him, and my sister’s acknowledgment of her debt to him, for the payment to Beaumont. She is now in Norway with the Bassenthwaites; but the two signatures make the matter quite clear. There is no necessity for any inquiry.” He paused, struggling with an emotion which he feared would get the better of his manhood. Katherine saw that, and it affected her keenly. “He sent you those signatures!” she said, as a sense of her father’s cruelty dawned on her. “What a brutal, what an infamous thing to do! What a message from the grave!” “Mr. Massarene was quite within his rights,” said Ronald stiffly: “wholly within them. As my sister’s husband is dead, I am the person to whom her creditors should apply. I blame him for lending her such a sum, without my knowledge, in his lifetime. It is impossible to say to you what I suffer in finding her--in finding her----” His voice broke down; for an instant he walked away to the window nearest him, and looked out in silence. Katherine did not reply. She was thinking of the many times, in her father’s private account books, in which Lady Kenilworth’s name was written, the many slips in the old check-books in which there was also written, in her father’s hand: “Drawn self: passed to Lady K.” What could she say? It seemed to her nothing, yet she felt acute sorrow for this proud, sensitive, honorable gentleman, who had the cruel humiliation of such a discovery and such a confession, after all his pride, his scorn, and his avoidance of her and of her parents. In another moment he turned back from the window and walked toward her. “I came to ask you, if you can, not to let your men of business know of this,” he said more calmly. “I do not think there is any necessity for them to know. I regret unspeakably that I cannot repay this sum at once, but I am a poor man. In a month’s time I hope to be able to do so. Meanwhile, if you can keep my sister’s wretched secret, I shall be very grateful to you.”