The supper was bright and lively.  Three men besides himself, and a cousin, a pretty, chatty woman of the world, completed De Burgh’s party.  There was plenty of laughing and chaffing.  Katherine felt seized by a feverish desire to shake off dull care, to forget the past, to be as other women were.  There was no reason why she should not.  So she laughed and talked with unusual animation, and treated her host with kindly courtesy, that set his deep eyes aglow with hope and pleasure.

“It is a great advantage to be rich,” said Mrs. Ormonde, reflectively, as she leaned comfortably in the corner of the carriage which conveyed her and her sister-in-law home.  She was always a little nettled when she found how completely Katherine had effaced herself from De Burgh’s fickle mind.  She had been highly pleased with the idea of having her husband’s distinguished relative for a virtuous and despairing adorer, and his desertion had mortified her considerably.

“Yes, money is certainly a great help,” returned Katherine, scarce heeding what she said.

“It certainly has been to you, Katie.  Don’t think me disagreeable for suggesting it, but do you suppose De Burgh would show you all this devotion if you were to lose your money?”

“Oh no!  He could not afford it.  He told me he must marry a rich woman.”

“Did he, really?  It is just like him.  What audacity!  I wonder you ever spoke to him again.  Then you are going in for rank, Katherine?”

“How can you tell?  I don’t know myself.  Good-night.  I shall tell you whenever I know my own mind.”

“She is as close as wax, with all her frankness,” thought Mrs. Ormonde as she went up to her room, after taking an affectionate leave of her sister-in-law.

The boys at school, Katherine found time hung somewhat heavily on her hands—­a condition of things only too favorable to thought and visions of what “might have been.”  So, with the earnest hope of finding the exhilarations which might lead, through forgetfulness, to the happiness she so eagerly craved, Katherine accepted almost all the invitations which were soon showered upon her.  At the houses of acquaintances she had made abroad she made numerous new ones, who were quite ready to fete, the handsome, sweet-voiced, pleasant-mannered heiress, who seemed to think so little about herself.

“Just the creature to be imposed upon, my dear!” as each mother whispered to the one next her, thinking, of course, of the other’s son.

But her most satisfactory hours were those spent with Rachel, when they talked of the business, and often branched off to more abstract subjects.  To the past they never alluded.  Katherine was glad to see that the dead, hopeless expression of Rachel Trant’s eyes had changed, yet not altogether for good.  A certain degree of alertness had brightened them, but with it had come a hard, steady look, as though the spirit within had a special work to do, and was steeled and “straitened till it be accomplished.”