m a position
which he felt to be both painful and humiliating. He was in a measure
Captain Hyde's host, and subject to traditions regarding the duties of
that character; any display of anger would be derogatory to him, and yet
how difficult was restraint! So his father's interference was a welcome
one; and he was reconciled to his own disappointment, when, looking
back, he saw the old gentleman slowly taking the road to Van Heemskirk's
with the pretty girls in their quilted red hoods, one on each side of
him.

The elder was very polite to his charges; he never once regretted to
them the loss of his pipe, and chat with Colonel Gordon. But he noticed
that Katherine was silent and disappointed, and that she lingered in her
own room after her arrival at home. Her subsequent pretty cheerfulness,
her delight in her lilies, her confiding claims upon her father's
love,--nothing in these things deceived him. He saw beneath all the
fluttering young heart, trembling, and yet happy in the new, sweet
feeling, never felt before, which had come to it that afternoon.

But he thought that most girls had to have this initiative: it prepared
the way for a soberer and more lasting affection. In the end, Katherine
would perceive how imprudent, how impossible, a marriage with Captain
Hyde must be; and her heart would turn back to Neil, who had been her
lover from boyhood. Yet he reflected, it would be well to have the
matter understood, and to give it that "possibility" which is best
attained on a money basis.

So while he and the Van Heemskirks discussed the matter,--a little
reluctantly, he thought, on their part,--Katherine talked with Joanna of
the Gordons. Her heart was so full of her lover, that it was a relief to
discuss the people and things nearest to him. And her very repression
excited her. She toyed with her cambric kerchief before the small
looking-glass, and imitated the fashionable English lady with a piquant
cleverness that provoked low peals of laughter, and a retrospective
discussion of the evening, which was merry enough, without being in the
least ill-natured.

But, oh, in what strange solitudes every separate soul dwells! When
Katherine kissed her sister, and said simperingly, with the highest
English accent, "La, child, I protest it has been the most agreeable
evening," Joanna had not a suspicion of the joy and danger that had come
to the dear little one at her side. She was laughing softly with her,
even while the