letter in the dirt in a rage, and never read it.

Steps came rapidly, the door opened, and there was George Neville again,
but not the same George Neville that went out but thirty seconds before.
He stood in the door looking very black, and with a sardonic smile on
his lips.

"An excellent jest, Mistress!" said he, ironically.

"Why, what is the matter?" said the lady, stoutly; but her red cheeks
belied her assumption of innocence.

"Oh, not much," said George, with a bitter sneer. "It is an old story;
only I thought you were nobler than the rest of your sex. This letter is
to Mr. Griffith Gaunt."

"Well, Sir!" said Kate, with a face of serene and candid innocence.

"And Mr. Griffith Gaunt is a suitor of yours."

"Say, _was_. He is so no longer. He and I are out. But for that, think
you I had even listened to--what you have been saying to me this ever so
long?"

"Oh, that alters the case," said George. "But stay!" and he knitted his
brows, and reflected.

Up to a moment ago, the loftiness of Catharine Peyton's demeanor, and
the celestial something in her soul-like, dreamy eyes, had convinced him
she was a creature free from the small dishonesty and lubricity he had
noted in so many women otherwise amiable and good. But this business of
the letter had shaken the illusion.

"Stay!" said he, stiffly, "You say Mr. Gaunt and you are out?"

Catharine assented by a movement of her fair head.

"And he is leaving the country. Perhaps this letter is to keep him from
leaving the country."

"Only until he has buried his benefactor," murmured Kate, in deprecating
accents.

George wore a bitter sneer at this.

"Mistress Kate," said he, after a significant pause, "do you read
Moliere?"

She bridled a little, and would not reply. She knew Moliere quite well
enough not to want his wit levelled at her head.

"Do you admire the character of Celimene?"

No reply.

"You do not. How can you? She was too much your inferior. She never sent
one of her lovers with a letter to the other to stop his flight. Well,
you may eclipse Celimene; but permit me to remind you that I am George
Neville, and not Georges Dandin."

Miss Peyton rose from her seat with eyes that literally flashed fire;
and--the horrible truth must be told--her first wild impulse was to
reply to all this Moliere with one cut of her little riding-whip. But
she had a swift mind, and two reflections entered it together: first,
that this would be unlike a ge