“Well, I shall be glad of your guidance, for I hardly know my way back to where the omnibus starts.  Such a horrible low part of the town for a man of fortune to live in!  I wonder what Colonel Ormonde would say to it?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” returned Kate, laughing.  “Now come downstairs.  If you go on I will speak to my uncle, and follow you.”

“I am sorry you have been annoyed,” said Katherine, when having tapped at the door, Mr. Liddell desired her to “come in.”  He was standing at an old-fashioned bureau, the front of which let down to form a writing-desk and enclosed a number of various-sized drawers.  He had taken out several packets of paper neatly tied with red tape and seemed to be rearranging them.

“I am going to take my sister-in-law back to the omnibus; you may be sure she will never intrude again.”

“She shall not,” he replied, turning to face her.  Katherine thought how ghastly pale and pinched he looked.  “I see the sort of creature she is—­a doll that would sell her sawdust soul for finery and glitter; ay, and the lives of all who belong to her for an hour of pleasure.”

Katherine was shocked at his fierce, uncalled-for bitterness.

“She has lived with us for more than a year and a half, and we have found her very pleasant and kind.  Her children are dear, sweet things.  You should not judge her so harshly.”

“You are a greater fool than I took you for,” cried Mr. Liddell.  “Go take them away, and mind they do not come back.”

Katherine hastened after her visitors and led them by a more direct route than they had traversed in coming.  It took them past a cake shop, where she spent one of her few sixpences in appeasing her nephews’ appetite, which, at least, with Cecil, grew with what it fed upon, in the matter of cakes.

The children, each holding one of her hands, chattered away, telling many particulars of grannie and Jane, and the cat, to say nothing of a most interesting gardener who came to cut the grass.  To all of which Katherine lent a willing ear.  How ardently she longed to be at home with the dear mother again!  She had never done half enough for her.  Ah, if they only could be together again in Florence or Dresden as they used to be!

Mrs. Fred Liddell kept almost complete silence—­a very unusual case with her—­and only as she paused before following her little boys into the omnibus did she give any clew to the current of her thoughts.  “Should Colonel Ormonde come on Saturday when you are with us—­which is not likely—­do not say anything about that horrid old man’s rudeness; one does not like to confess to being turned out.”

“Certainly not.  I shall say nothing, you may be sure.”

“Good-by, then.  I shall tell your mother you are looking wretchedly.”

“Pray do not,” cried Katherine, but the conductor’s loud stamping on his perch to start the driver drowned her voice.