“I do not wonder at it,” ejaculated Miss Payne.  “And in spite of what you say, Bertie, I should not like to give any materials to be made up by a woman who deliberately stole in broad daylight.”

“I do not see that the light made any difference,” returned Bertie; and they plunged into a warm discussion.  Katherine soon lost the sense of what they were saying.  Her heart was throbbing as if a sudden stunning blow had been dealt her, and the words, “Theft is theft, whatever the circumstances that seem to extenuate it,” beat as if with a sledge-hammer on her brain.

If for a theft, value perhaps sixpence, this poor woman, who had been driven to it by the direst necessity, was exposed to trial, to the gaze of careless lookers-on, to loss of character, to the exposure of her sore want, to the degradation of imprisonment, what should be awarded to her, Katherine Liddell, an educated gentlewoman, for stealing a large fortune from its rightful owner, and that, too, under no pressure of immediate distress?  True, she firmly believed that had her uncle not been struck down by death he would have left her a large portion of it; that she had a better right to it than a stranger.  Still that did not alter the fact that she was a thief.  If every one thus dared to infringe the rights of others, what law, what security would remain?

These ideas had never quite left her since the day she had written “Manuscript to be destroyed” on the fatal little parcel, which had been ever with her during her various journeyings since.  More than once she had made up her mind to destroy it, but some influence—­some terror of destroying this expression of what her uncle once wished—­had stayed her hand; her courage stopped there.  Perhaps a faint foreshadowing of some future act of restitution caused this reluctance, unknown to herself, but certainly at present no such possibility dawned upon her.  She felt that she held her property chiefly in trust for others, especially her nephews.  Often she had forgotten her secret during her mother’s lifetime, but the consciousness of it always returned with a sense of being out of moral harmony, which made her somewhat fitful in her conduct, particularly as regarded her expenditure, being sometimes tempted to costly purchases, and anon shrinking from outlay as though not entitled to spend the money which was nominally hers.  Nathan’s parable did not strike more humiliating conviction to Israel’s erring king than Bertie Payne’s “ower true tale.”  At length she mastered these painful thoughts, and sought relief from them in speech.

“What do you think of doing for this poor woman?” she asked, taking a screen to shelter her face from the fire and observation.

“I have not settled details in my own mind yet,” he said; “but as soon as she is released I must get her into a new neighborhood and redeem her sewing-machine.  Then, if we can get her work and help her till she begins to earn a little, she may get on.”