n spite of his kind
forbearance, despise her as a cheat. Surely it was a sufficient
punishment for a delicately proud woman to know that she had given her
love unasked. All that remained for her was to hide her deep wounds,
that by stifling the new and vivid feelings which troubled her they
would die out, and so leave her in a state of monotonous repose. She
would endeavor by all possible means to win forgetfulness.

When Cis came back for the Christmas holidays, therefore, he found his
auntie ready to go out with Charlie and himself to circus and pantomime,
Polytechnic and wax-works, to his heart's content. It was not a brisk
frosty Christmas, or she would no doubt have been with them on the ice,
and the round of boyish dissipations called forth an oracular sentence
from Miss Payne. "It's just as well those boys are going back to school,
Katherine. You are more foolish about them than you used to be, and if
they staid on you would completely ruin them."

Just before the holidays were over, Mrs. Ormonde visited London, or
rather paused in passing through from the distinguished Christmas
gathering to which, to her pride and satisfaction, she had been invited
at Lady Mary Vincent's. The little boys were indifferently glad to see
her, and with the jealousy inherent in a disposition such as hers she
was vexed at not being first with her own boys, yet delighted to hand
over the care and trouble of them to any one who would undertake it.
These mixed feelings ruffled the bright surface of her self-content,
inflated as it was by her increasing social success.

She chose to put up at a quiet hotel in Dover Street rather than accept
Katherine's and Miss Payne's joint invitation to Wilton Street.

"I know you will not mind, Katie dear," she said, as she sat at tea (to
which refreshment she had invited her sister-in-law). "You see if it
were your own house, quite your own, I should prefer staying with you to
going anywhere else. As it is----"

"You are quite right to please yourself," put in Katherine.

"Yes, you are always kind and considerate. But, do you know, both
Colonel Ormonde and I are very anxious you should establish yourself on
a proper footing. Believe me, you do not take the social position you
ought, living with an obscure old maid like Miss Payne"--this in a tone
of strong common-sense. "The proper place for you is with us at
Castleford in the autumn and winter, and a house in town with us in the
spring. Then y