“I have ventured to bring you a manuscript,” began Katherine, smiling with all her might, with an abject desire to propitiate the arbiter of her mother’s fate.

“So I see,” he returned, ruefully but politely.

“It is a beautiful story, and I thought it ought to be published by a great house like yours,” pursued Katherine.

“Thank you,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.  “Pray is it your own?”

“Mine!  Oh dear no!  It is my mother’s.  She is not very strong, so I brought it.”

There was a slight faltering in her voice that suggested a good deal to her hearer.  “Then you are not Mrs. W. Liddell,” glancing at the card, “but Mrs. Liddell’s daughter.  Pray put down that heavy parcel.  Three volumes, I suppose?”

“Yes, three volumes, but they are not very long, and the story is most interesting.”

“No doubt.  I hope it is not historical?”

“Oh no! quite modern.”

“So much the better.  Well, Miss Liddell, I will look at the manuscript, or rather our reader shall, and let you know the result in due course; but I must warn you that we are rather overdone with three-volume novels, and there are already a large number of manuscripts awaiting perusal, so you must not expect our verdict for some little time.”

“When you will, but oh! as soon as you can,” she urged.

“I will keep your address, and you shall hear at the earliest date we can manage.  Good-morning.  Very damp, uncomfortable day.”

Katherine felt herself dismissed, and almost forgot her ulterior intention.  “Would you be so very good as to let me look at the Directory, if you have one?”

“Certainly,” said Wyndham, who was slipping the card under the string of poor Katherine’s parcel.  “Here, Tompkins, let this young lady see the Directory.  Excuse me—­I am a good deal pressed for time;” and with a bow he went off, the manuscript under his arm.

“Well, it is really in his hands, at all events,” thought Katherine, looking wistfully after it.

A boy with inky hands here placed that thick volume, the Post-Office Directory, before her, and she proceeded to search confusedly among the endless pages of names, a little strengthened and cheered by her brief interview with the publisher.  It seemed that she was in a lucky vein:  trouble is always conducive to superstition.  When visible hope fails, poor human hearts turn to the invisible and the improbable.

At last she paused at “John Wilmot Liddell, 27 Legrave Crescent, Camden Town, N. W.”  That must be her uncle; they were all Wilmot Liddells.  How to reach his abode was the question.

The inky boy soon gave her the requisite information.  “You take a Waterloo ’bus at Piccadilly Circus; it runs through to Camden Town; that is, to the beginning of Camden Town,” he said.  Katherine thanked him, and again set forth.

It was a long, tedious drive.  The omnibus was crammed with warm passengers and damp umbrellas, but Katherine was too racked with impatience and fear to heed small discomforts.  Would her dreaded relative order her out of his sight at once?  Was her interview with the publisher a good omen?