prolonged itself as
Katharine realized the strength of her desire to speak the words that
should keep William for ever, and the baseness of the temptation which
assailed her to make the movement, or speak the word, which he had often
begged her for, which she was now near enough to feeling. She held the
letter in her hand. She sat silent.

At this moment there was a stir in the other room; the voice of
Mrs. Hilbery was heard talking of proof-sheets rescued by miraculous
providence from butcher's ledgers in Australia; the curtain separating
one room from the other was drawn apart, and Mrs. Hilbery and Augustus
Pelham stood in the doorway. Mrs. Hilbery stopped short. She looked
at her daughter, and at the man her daughter was to marry, with her
peculiar smile that always seemed to tremble on the brink of satire.

"The best of all my treasures, Mr. Pelham!" she exclaimed. "Don't move,
Katharine. Sit still, William. Mr. Pelham will come another day."

Mr. Pelham looked, smiled, bowed, and, as his hostess had moved on,
followed her without a word. The curtain was drawn again either by him
or by Mrs. Hilbery.

But her mother had settled the question somehow. Katharine doubted no
longer.

"As I told you last night," she said, "I think it's your duty, if
there's a chance that you care for Cassandra, to discover what your
feeling is for her now. It's your duty to her, as well as to me. But we
must tell my mother. We can't go on pretending."

"That is entirely in your hands, of course," said Rodney, with an
immediate return to the manner of a formal man of honor.

"Very well," said Katharine.

Directly he left her she would go to her mother, and explain that the
engagement was at an end--or it might be better that they should go
together?

"But, Katharine," Rodney began, nervously attempting to stuff
Cassandra's sheets back into their envelope; "if Cassandra--should
Cassandra--you've asked Cassandra to stay with you."

"Yes; but I've not posted the letter."

He crossed his knees in a discomfited silence. By all his codes it
was impossible to ask a woman with whom he had just broken off his
engagement to help him to become acquainted with another woman with a
view to his falling in love with her. If it was announced that their
engagement was over, a long and complete separation would inevitably
follow; in those circumstances, letters and gifts were returned; after
years of distance the severed couple met, perhaps at