“I do not know Mr. van Rensselaer,” said Katrine.

“What!” Mrs. Lennox cried, with amazement.  “I thought you met him at Ravenel!  I understood he heard you sing there, and it was because of it that he wanted to send you abroad to study.”

“If it be Mr. van Rensselaer who has been so kind to me, I do not know it,” Katrine answered, in no small degree annoyed by this enforced intimacy.  “I have never seen him nor heard his name before in my life.”

If Mrs. Lennox noted Katrine’s manner she was in nowise deterred by it from going deeper into the subject.

“Mrs. Ravenel told me,” she continued, with excitement in her voice, “that Nick van Rensselaer came to her at Bar Harbor, and asked the use of her name if he furnished the means to send you abroad to study.  He said that he was especially anxious to remain unknown in the matter.  Mrs. Ravenel told me afterward that you had declined the offer because of having inherited a fortune yourself.  But, of course, I thought you must have met him; in fact, I remember that Frank said he thought so, too.  By-the-way,” she went on, rising to go, “he is coming over soon; Mr. Ravenel, I mean.”  She looked conscious for a second, as though preferring to keep something back, and then finished:  “He will, of course, call while he is here?”

“He may be so kind,” Katrine answered, suavely.

“Good-bye,” Mrs. Lennox said, holding out a slim, black-gloved hand first to the Countess and then to Katrine.  “I hope your studies will let you come to me soon.  I hear you are to make your debut in the spring.”

Katrine laughed.  “That will be as Josef says.”

“Good-bye again.”

After Mrs. Lennox had left the room, Katrine and the Countess looked at each other with questioning in the eyes of each.

“You lived at a place called Ravenel,” Madame de Nemours asked, “and never told me?”

“I did not think the name one you would care to hear,” Katrine answered.

“Ah, you so sweet thing!” the Countess cried, impulsively, putting her hand on the girl’s cheek.  “You were right.  There are probably thousands of Ravenels in America unconnected with my unfortunate life.”

But Katrine, who had had her own surprises in the interview, inquired, “Why did Mrs. Lennox, who is very beautiful, very wealthy, and of the monde, take so much trouble to come here to tell me of a Mr. van Rensselaer?”

“I didn’t think she came for that alone,” answered the Countess.  “I thought she wanted you to know that Monsieur Ravenel was coming over to visit her.”

Naturally, a marked change in Katrine’s attitude toward her unknown benefactor followed this talk with Anne Lennox.  She had become accustomed to think of “The Dear Unknown” as a lady, old and beneficent.  The new idea was startling.  Thinking it over, she became convinced of the extreme unlikelihood that two people should have become so greatly interested in her voice at exactly the same time, and her conclusions led to believing that Mrs. Lennox had probably given her a true version of the affair.  But if Nicholas van Rensselaer were her patron, instead of some white-haired old lady down in Leeds or Kent or Surrey, as she had imagined, her last letter must inevitably have told him, who had spent so much time in North Carolina, of her love for Francis Ravenel.