“My dear, if you adopt that tone I have nothing more to say, but it is horribly provoking and disappointing.  I am quite sure people began to expect it—­that you would marry Lord de Burgh, I mean, and what a position you have thrown away.  You can’t expect a man like him to be a saint.  There is no use trying men by our standard; in short, it’s not much matter what standard we have, we must always come down a step or two if we mean to make both ends meet; but you see, when a man has money and right principles, he can atone for a lot.”

Katherine gazed at her astonished.  How was it that she had found the scent which led so near the real track?

“No money,” she said, gravely, “could in any way affect the matters in dispute between Lord de Burgh and myself, so I will not speak any more on the subject.  It has all been very painful, and the worst part is that I cannot tell you.”

“Well, it must be bad,” observed Mrs. Needham, in a complaining tone, “but I suppose I must just hold my tongue.”

So Katherine was left in comparative peace.  But it was a hard passage to her; she could not shake off the sickening sense of wrong and sorrow, the painful consciousness of being humiliated which the revelation inflicted on her, the feeling that she was, in some inexplicable way, touched by the evil-doing of those who were so near her.

A slight cold, caught she knew not how, aggravated the fever induced by distress of mind, and next day Mrs. Needham thought her so unwell that she insisted on sending for the doctor, who condemned Katherine to her bed, a composing draught, and solitude.

The doctor, however, could not forbid letters, and Katherine’s seclusion was much disturbed by a long, rambling, impassioned epistle from De Burgh, in which, though he promised not to intrude upon her at present, he refused to give up all hope, as he could not believe that she would always maintain her present exaggerated and unreasonable frame of mind—­a letter that did him no good in Katherine’s estimation.  Then she tried to resume her work.  But Mrs. Needham, returning from one of her “rapid acts” of inspection and negotiation in and out divers and sundry warehouses, dismissed her peremptorily to lie down on the sofa in the drawing-room, in reality to get her out of the way, as she was expecting a visit from Miss Payne, with whom she wanted a little private conversation.

“Can you throw any light on this mysterious quarrel between Katherine and Lord de Burgh?” she asked, abruptly, as soon as Miss Payne was seated in the study.

“Quarrel? have they quarrelled?  I know nothing about it.  When did they quarrel?”

“About three days ago.  He came here to propose for her, I know he did, they were talking together for—­oh!—­barely a quarter-of-an-hour in the drawing-room, when I heard her fly up stairs, and he rushed away, slamming the door as if he would take the front of the house out.  Katherine has never been herself since.  It is my firm belief she is strongly attached to him,—­what do you think?”