“When I listen to you, and hear in the tones of your voice more even than in your words that you are my friend, that you really care for me, that it will be a real joy to you to see me rise above myself, I feel that I can live and strive and be something more than a galvanized corpse.  You give me strength.  I wonder if I shall ever be able to prove to you what you have done for me.  Stand by me, and I will try to put the past under my feet.  I do not wish to presume on the great goodness you have shown me nor to forget the difference between us socially, but oh! let me believe you love me—­even me—­with the kindly affection that can forgive even while it blames.”

“Be assured of that, Rachel,” cried Katherine, her eyes moist and beautiful with the divine light of kindness and sympathy, as she stretched out her hand to clasp Rachel’s.  “I have from the first been drawn to you strangely—­it is something instinctive—­and I have firm belief in your future, if you will but believe in yourself.  You are a strong, brave woman, who can dare to look truth in the face.  You will be useful and successful yet.”

Rachel held her hand tightly for a minute in silence; then she said, in a low but firm voice:  “I will try to realize your belief.  I should be too unworthy if I failed to do my very best.  There!  I have discarded the past; you shall hear of it no more.”

They were silent for a while; then a solemn old eight-day clock with a fine tone struck loudly and deliberatedly in the room below.  Katherine, with a smile, counted each stroke.  “Nine!” she exclaimed, when the last had sounded; “and though it is 9 P.M., let it be the first hour of your new life.”  She rose, and passing her arm over Rachel’s shoulder, kissed her once more with sisterly warmth.  “Mr. Payne is waiting for me, so I must leave you.  I have sent you some books; I have but few here.  One will amuse you, I am sure, though it is old enough—­a translation of the Memoirs of Madam d’Abrantes.  It is full of such quaint pictures of the great Napoleon’s court, and does not display much dignity or nobility, yet it is an honest sort of book.”

“Thank you.  I don’t want novels now; they generally pain me.  But my greatest solace is to forget myself in a book.”

Bertie Payne’s visit was a very happy one.  The boys adored him, and subjects of discussion and difference of opinion never failed between Katherine and himself.  She consulted him as to what school would be best for Cecil, and he advised that he should be left as a boarder at the one which he now attended, and where he had made fair progress, when Miss Payne and Katherine returned to town.

Bertie looked a new man when he bade them good-by, promising to come again soon.

Beyond sending a newspaper which recorded his victory in the Barton Towers steeple-chase De Burgh made no sign, and life ran smoothly in its ordinary grooves at Sandbourne.