"But where have _you_ been all this time?" said Katy, who felt this flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at not hearing from you." "I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting," replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and letters day before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my leave extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret it." "Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, leaning her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good to see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure." "Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her brother when they were alone. "She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that scene with the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose she could look so handsome." "Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather irrelevantly. "No,--at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that they were to start to-day." Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as he spoke. There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. He was sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when his sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them aloud, partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they made necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the ladies for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered with; and as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little Amy, it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of their pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, this did not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and though she speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly sympathetic, and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's uncle could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process of disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are sometimes caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she built certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for Katy's courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good looks.