w days, you see; so I
thought I should perhaps find you here, as I saw your numerous party
drive past the hotel."

"I like this corner, and often come here. But, Mr. De Burgh, you look as
if the times were out of joint."

"So they are"--suddenly seating himself on a flat stone nearly at
Katherine's feet, leaning his elbow on another, and resting his head on
his hand, so as to look up easily in her face.

"What gloomy dark eyes he has!" she thought.

"I should like to tell you why," he went on.

"Very well," returned Katherine, who felt a little uneasy.

"I am pretty considerably in debt, to begin with. If I paid up I should
have about three half-pence a year to live on. Besides my debts I have
an unconscionably ancient relative whose title and a beggarly five
thousand a year must come to me when he dies, if he ever dies. This
venerable impediment has some hundred or more thousands which he can
bequeath to whom he likes. Hitherto he has not considered me a credit to
the family. Well, I went to him the other day, on his own invitation,
and to my amazement he offered to pay my debts--on one condition."

"I do hope he will," cried Katherine, as De Burgh paused. She was quite
interested and relieved by the tone of his narrative.

"Ay, but there's the rub. I can't fulfil the condition, I fear. It is
that I should marry a woman rich enough to replace the money my debts
will absorb; a particular woman who doesn't care for me, and whom,
knowing the hideous tangle of motives that hangs round the central idea
of winning her, I am almost ashamed to ask; but a woman that any man
might court; a woman I have loved from the first moment my eyes met
hers, who has haunted and distracted me ever since, and who is, I dare
say, a great deal too good for me; but a creature I will strive to win,
no matter what the cost of success. This girl or rather (for there is a
richness and ripeness of nature about her which deserves the term) this
fair, sweet woman--I need not name her to you." He stopped, and his
passionate pleading eyes held hers. Katherine grew white, half with
fear, half with sincere compassion. She tried to speak. At last the
words came.

"You make me terribly sad, Mr. De Burgh," she said, with trembling lips.
"You make me _so_ sorry that I cannot marry you; but I cannot--indeed I
cannot. Will Lord De Burgh not pay your debts if he knows you have done
your best to persuade me to marry you?"

De Burgh laughed a cynical l