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."

"Yes, and was one of the handsomest women there.--But I don't suppose
Mrs. Errington ever gives a thought to drawing-room or Buckingham Palace
balls.--You see she is in a way always at court, for her king is always
beside her," returned Mrs. Needham, with a becoming smile. "Good-night,
Mrs. Ormonde."

THE END

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