“Ah! how can I answer you?  If indeed you can trust and respect me, I can and will love you well,” she exclaimed, with the sweet frankness which always enchanted him.

“Will you love me with the whole unstinted love of your rich nature?  I cannot spare a grain,” said Errington, jealously.

“But I do love you,” murmured Katherine; “I am almost frightened at loving you so much.”

Could it be cold, composed, immovable Errington who strained her so closely to his heart, whose lips clung so passionately to hers?

“I have a great deal to tell you,” began Katherine, when she had extricated herself and recovered some composure.  “But I must go and see poor Miss Payne; she will wonder what has become of me.”

“Tell her you are obliged to talk to me of business, and come back soon.  I have much to consult you about, and I can only remain till to-morrow evening—­do not stay away.”

And Katherine returned very soon.

“Miss Payne is dreadfully puzzled,” she said, smiling and blushing, quivering in every vein with the strange, almost awful happiness which overwhelmed her.

“Now, what have you to tell me?” asked Errington, and she gave him a full description of George Liddell’s visit and proposal to provide for Cis and Charlie.

Errington was too happy to heed the details much, he only remarked that he was glad Liddell had come to his right mind.

“I want you to tell Miss Payne as soon as possible our new plans; she is coming downstairs this evening, you say?  Let me break the news to her.  I think she will give us her blessing; and, Katherine, my sweet Katherine, there is no reason to delay our marriage.  You have no fixed home; the sooner you make one for yourself and me the better.  The idea is intoxicating.  Our poverty sets us free from the trammels of conventionality; we have nothing to wait for.”

So they were married.

Here ought to come “Finis!” yet real life had only begun for them.  Were they happy?  Yes.  For under the wild sweetness of warmest passionate love lay the lasting rock of comprehension and genial companionship.  Fuller knowledge brought deeper esteem, and the only secret Katherine ever kept from her husband was the true history of Rachel Trant.

A severe attack of fever, brought on by overstudy, immediately after Katherine’s marriage, prevented Bertie Payne from carrying out his missionary scheme.  He was reluctantly obliged to put up with the East-End heathen, “who,” as Miss Payne observed, “were bad enough to satisfy the largest appetite for sinners.”

There his faithful sister established herself to make a home for him, renouncing her comfortable West-End abode, and finding ample interest in the pursuits she affected to treat as fads.

“Altogether everything has turned out in the most extraordinary and unexpected manner,” as Mrs. Ormonde observed to Mrs. Needham, whom she encountered at one of Lady Mary Vincent’s receptions.  “Katherine seems quite proud to settle down in a suburban villa away in St. John’s Wood as Mrs. Errington, while she might have made a figure at court as Lady de Burgh.  By the way, I see your friend, Mrs. Urquhart, was presented at the last drawing-room.”