The Bournemouth residence was really pretty and had a simple elegance in it which was due to a great painter whose whim and pleasure it had been; and it was a fitting retreat for two women in deep mourning. But Margaret Massarene chose to consider it as a mixture of workhouse and prison. Her fretfulness and incessant lamentation made her companionship very trying, for it was the kind of obstinate discontent with which no arguments can struggle with any chance of success. One fine dim balmy morning, when the smell of the sea blended strongly with the scent from the pine-woods, Katherine was alone in the large room which had been the painter’s studio and was now set aside for her own use, reading the still voluminous correspondence from her agents and solicitors. A young footman, who had not the perfect training which Mr. Winter had exacted in his underlings, opened the door and ushered in unannounced a tall fair man, who stood in hesitation on the threshold. “Lord Hurstmanceaux, ma’am,” said the young servant, and shut the door behind the visitor’s back. Katherine looked up from her heavily-laden writing-table, and was vexed to feel that she changed color. “My mother and I do not receive----” she said with some embarrassment. Hurstmanceaux came across the room and stood on the other side of the table. “You have not drawn the check which I sent to you on Coutts’s,” he said abruptly. She answered merely “No.” “And why not?” “Because I do not choose to take that money.” Hurstmanceaux’s face grew red and very stern. “You insult me, Miss Massarene.” “I do not mean to do so,” said Katherine gently. “I begged you not to send it to me. My father, I am certain, never expected the duchess to repay it.” “That is very singular language. Do you mean that your father was on terms with my sister which would justify him in making her such gifts?” She was silent; that was her meaning but she could not say so. “If you do think it, you must cease to think it,” said Ronald. “If there were any man in your family----” Katherine looked him straight in the eyes. “Pray do not let the fact of my sex influence you. I dare say I have many male relatives, but they are, I believe, navvies, and colliers, and laborers, and the like, who would not be foemen worthy of your patrician steel.” She spoke with a certain cold and careless contempt which brought the blood to his cheeks. “You have full right to condemn my sister, but not to suppose what you do not know,” he said with some embarrassment. “The debt was a matter of business, as a matter of business I treat it, and refund the money to you, who are the sole living representative of the dead creditor.”