correspondence; and Joris would have decidedly interfered with visits sure to cause unpleasant remarks about his daughter.  The medium was found in the mantua-maker, Miss Pitt.  Mrs. Gordon was her most profitable customer, and Katherine went there for needles and threads and such small wares as are constantly needed in a household.  And whenever she did so, Miss Pitt was sure to remark, in an after-thought kind of way, “Oh, I had nearly forgotten, miss!  Here is a small parcel that Mrs. Gordon desired me to present to you.”

One exquisite morning in May, Katherine stood at an open window looking over the garden and the river, and the green hills and meadows across the stream.  Her heart was full of hope.  Richard’s recovery was so far advanced that he had taken several rides in the middle of the day.  Always he had passed the Van Heemskirks’ house, and always Katherine had been waiting to rain down upon his lifted face the influence of her most bewitching beauty and her tenderest smiles.  She was thinking of the last of these events,—­of Richard’s rapid exhibition of a long, folded paper, and the singular and emphatic wave which he gave it towards the river.  His whole air and attitude had expressed delight and hope; could he really mean that she was to meet him again at their old trysting-place?

[Illustration:  His whole air and attitude had expressed delight]

As thus she happily mused, some one called her mother from the front hall.  On fine mornings it was customary to leave the door standing open; and the visitor advanced to the foot of the stairs, and called once more, “Lysbet Van Heemskirk!  Is there naebody in to bid me welcome?” Then Katherine knew it was Madam Semple; and she ran to her mother’s room, and begged her to go down and receive the caller.  For in these days Katherine dreaded Madam Semple a little.  Very naturally, the mother blamed her for Neil’s suffering and loss of time and prestige; and she found it hard to forgive also her positive rejection of his suit.  For her sake, she herself had been made to suffer mortification and disappointment.  She had lost her friends in a way which deprived her of all the fruits of her kindness.  The Gordons thought Neil had transgressed all the laws of hospitality.  The Semples had a similar charge to make.  And it provoked Madam Semple that Mrs. Gordon continued her friendship with Katherine.  Every one else blamed Katherine altogether in the matter; Mrs. Gordon had defied the use and wont of society on such occasions, and thrown the whole blame on Neil.  Somehow, in her secret heart, she even blamed Lysbet a little.  “Ever since I told her there was an earldom in the family, she’s been daft to push her daughter into it,” was her frequent remark to the elder; and he also reflected that the proposed alliance of Neil and Katharine had been received with coolness by Joris and Lysbet.  “It was the soldier or the dominie, either o’ them before our Neil;” and, though there was no apparent diminution of friendship, Semple and his wife frequently had a little private grumble at their own fireside.