“Oh, very likely; but, my dear Miss Payne, you need not warn me; I am quite sufficiently inclined to believe that the men who show me attention are thinking more of what I have than what I am.  Believe me it is not an agreeable frame of mind.  Mr. De Burgh is a strange sort of character.  He amuses me; he is not a bit like a modern man.  He doesn’t seem to think it worth while to conceal what he feels or thinks.  There is an odd well-bred roughness about him, if I may use such an expression; but I greatly prefer him to Colonel Ormonde.”

“Oh, you do?  Colonel Ormonde is just an average man,” added Miss Payne.

“I should hope the general average is higher; but I must not be ill-natured.  He has always been very kind to me.”

This was a pleasant interlude to Katherine.  She had succeeded in hushing her heart to rest for a while, in banishing the thoughts which had long tormented her.  Nothing had comforted and satisfied her as did this project of adopting her nephews.  It is true she had not yet announced it, but in her own mind she resolved that once they were under her wing, she would not let them go again, unless indeed something quite unforeseen occurred; nor did she anticipate any difficulties with their mother.  She would thus secure a natural legitimate interest in life, and make a home, which to a girl of her disposition was essential.  Yet she knew well that in renouncing the idea of marriage she was denying one of the strongest necessities of her nature.  The love and companionship of a man in whom she believed, for whom she could be ambitious, who would link her with the life and movement of the outer world, who would be the complement of her own being, was a dream of delight.  Not that she felt in the least unable to stand alone, or fancied she was too delicate to take care of herself, but life without the love of another self could never be full and perfect.  She was too true a woman not to value deeply the tenderness of a man; yet she had firmly resolved in justice to herself, in fairness to any possible husband, to renounce that crown of woman’s existence.  It was the only atonement she could make.  Well, at least her loving care of these dear little boys, who were in point of fact motherless, would in some degree expiate her evil deed, and would keep her heart warm and her mind healthy.

[**extra space]

Possessed of the true magic, “money,” obstacles faded away.  The expedition to Sandbourne was most successful.  Katherine was brighter than Miss Payne had ever seen her before.  The day was sunny, the place looked cheerful and picturesque.  It lay under a wooded hill, ending in a bold rocky point, which sheltered it and a wide bay from the easterly winds.  A splendid stretch of golden sands offered a playground for the racing waves, and an old tower crowned an islet near the opposite point of the land, which there lay low, and was covered with gorse and heather.