“Ahem!  No doubt they are anxious to show you every attention.  Would you like to take Turner with you?  I could spare her very well.”  Turner was the maid expressly engaged to wait upon Miss Liddell.

“Oh no, thank you, I want so little waiting on.  Lady Alice Mordaunt will be with Mrs. Ormonde, and will be sure to have a maid, so another might be inconvenient.”

“My dear Miss Liddell, if you will excuse me for thrusting advice upon you, I would say that ‘considering’ people is the very best way to prevent their showing you consideration.”

“Do you really think so?  Well, it is really no great matter.”

“Then you shall not want Turner?  Then I shall give her a holiday.  Her mother or her brother is ill, and she wants to go home.  Servants’ relations always seem to be ill.  It must cost them a good deal.”

“No doubt.  Will you come out with me?  I have some shopping to do, and your advice is always valuable.”

“I shall be very pleased, and I will say I shall miss you when you leave—­miss you very much.”

“Thank you,” said Katherine, gently.  “I believe you will as you say so.”

Without fully believing Ada’s rather exaggerated expressions of gratitude and affection, Katherine was soothed and pleased by them.  She was so truthful herself that she was disposed to trust others, and the hearty welcome offered her took off from the sense of loneliness which had long oppressed her.  Hers was too healthy a nature to encourage morbid grief.  To the last day of her life she remembered her mother with tender, loving-regret; but the consolation of knowing that her later days had been so happy, that she had passed away so peacefully, did much toward healing the wounds which were still bleeding.

On the appointed Monday Colonel Ormonde made his appearance in the early afternoon, and found Katherine quite ready to start.  He was stouter, louder, bluffer, than ever.  When Miss Payne was introduced to him he honored her with an almost imperceptible bow and a very perceptible stare.  Turning at once to Katherine, he exclaimed: 

“What! in complete marching order already?  I protest I never knew a woman punctual before.  But I always saw you were a sensible girl.  No nonsense about you.  Why, my wife told me you were looking ill.  I don’t see it.  At any rate Castleford air will soon bring back your roses.”

“I am feeling and looking better than when I came over, and Miss Payne has taken such good care of me,” said Katherine, who did not like to see the lady of the house so completely over-looked.

“Ah! that’s well.  You know you are too precious a piece of goods to be tampered with.  I believe Bertie Payne is a nephew of yours,” he added, addressing Miss Payne—­“a young fellow who was in my regiment three or four years ago, the Twenty-first Dragoon Guards?”

“He is my brother,” returned Miss Payne, stiffly.

“Ah!  Hope he is all right.  Have scarcely seen him since he has gone, not to the dogs, but to the saints, which is much the same thing.  Ha! ha! ha!”