CHAPTER XXV.

“BREAD CAST ON THE WATERS.”

There were indeed long and heavy days for Katherine, few though they were, before Mr. Newton thought it well to communicate the intelligence to Colonel and Mrs. Ormonde.  He wished to be able to extract some more favorable terms from Liddell, so that his favorite client might fulfil her ardent desire to keep her nephews still with her, and assist in their maintenance and education.  This was, in the shrewd old lawyer’s estimation, a most Quixotic project, but he saw it was the only idea which enabled her to bear the extreme distress caused by the prospect of returning the poor children on their mother’s hands.

A period of uncertainty is always trying, and the reflection that the present crisis was the result of her unfortunate infringement of the unalterable law of right and wrong overwhelmed her with a sense of guilt.  Had she not meddled with the matter, no doubt such a man as Errington would, were the case properly represented to him, have given some portion of the wealth bequeathed him to the family of the testator.  But how could she have foreseen?  True; but she might have resisted the temptation to deviate from the straight path.  “She might!” What an abyss of endless regret yawns at the sound of those words, used in the sense of too late!

This was a hard worldly trouble over which she could not weep.  Over and over again she told herself that nothing should part her from the boys, that she would devote her life to repair as far as possible the injury she had done them.  And Ada, would she also suffer for her (Katherine’s) sins?  But while brooding constantly on these miserable thoughts she kept a brave front, quiet and steady, though Miss Payne saw that her composure hid a good deal of suffering.

It was more, however, than Katherine’s resolution could accomplish to keep a few evening engagements which she had made.  “I should feel too great an impostor,” she said.  “How thankful I shall be when the murder is out and the nine days’ wonder over!  Have you any commissions, dear Miss Payne?  I want an object to take me out, and I feel I must not mope in-doors.”

“No, I cannot say I have any shopping to do, and I am obliged to go into the City myself.  Take a steady round of Kensington Gardens; it is quite mild and bright to-day.  I shall not return till six, I am afraid.”

So Katherine went out alone immediately after luncheon, before the world and his wife had time to get abroad.  She had made a circuit of the ornamental water, and was returning by the footpath near the sunk fence which separates the Gardens from the Park, when she recognized De Burgh coming toward her.  He had been in her thoughts at the moment; for, feeling that it was quite likely he had been considered a suitor, she was anxious to give him an opportunity of making an honorable retreat before society found out that the sceptre of wealth had slipped from her hand.