He handed her carefully into the brougham, and stood looking after it as she drove away.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A WANDERER RETURNS.

It was quite an event in Katherine’s quiet life to go to a party.  She had never been at one in London, and anticipated it with interest.  Both in Florence and Paris she had mixed in society and greatly enjoyed it.  Now she felt a little curious as to the impression she might make and receive.  Her nature was essentially vigorous and healthy, and threw off morbid feelings as certain chemicals repel others inimical to them.  She would have enjoyed life intensely but for the perpetually recurring sense of irritation against herself for having forfeited her own self-respect by her hasty action.  It would have been somewhat humiliating to have taken charity from the hands of Errington, but this was as nothing to the crushing abasement of knowing that she had cheated him.  Still, no condition of mind is constant—­except with monomaniacs—­and Katherine was often carried away from herself and her troubles.

She was glad, on the whole, that De Burgh was to be at Lady Barrington’s reception.

She was too genial, too responsive, not to find admiration very acceptable.  Nor could she believe that a man like De Burgh, hard, daring, careless, could suffer much or long through his affections.  It flattered her woman’s vanity, too, that with her he dropped his cynical, mocking tone, and spoke with straightforward earnestness.  He might have ended by interesting and flattering her till she loved him—­for he had a certain amount of attraction—­if her carefully resisted feeling for Errington had not created an antidote to the poison he might have introduced into her life.

Altogether she dressed with something of anticipated pleasure, and was not displeased with the result of her toilette.

Her dress was as deeply mourning as it was good taste to wear at an evening party.  A few folds of gauzy white lisse softened the edge of her thick black silk corsage, a jet necklet and comb set off her snowy, velvety throat and bright golden brown hair.

“I had no idea you would turn out so effectively!” exclaimed Mrs. Ormonde, examining her with a critical eye as they took off their wraps in the ladies’ cloak-room.  “Your dress might have been cut a little lower, dear; with a long throat like yours it is very easy to keep within the bounds of decency.  I wonder you do not buy yourself some diamonds; they are so becoming.”

“I shall wait for some one to give them to me,” returned Katherine, laughing.

“Quite right”—­very gravely—­“only if I were you I should make haste and decide on the ‘some one.’”

“Mrs. Ormonde and Miss Liddell!” shouted the waiters from landing to door, and the next moment Lady Barrington, a large woman in black velvet and a fierce white cap in which glittered an aigret of diamonds, was welcoming them with much cordiality.