tharine's sake Cassandra thought William a most distinguished and
interesting character, and welcomed first his conversation and then his
manuscript as the marks of a friendship which it flattered and delighted
her to inspire.

Katharine was still out when she arrived at Cheyne Walk. After greeting
her uncle and aunt and receiving, as usual, a present of two sovereigns
for "cab fares and dissipation" from Uncle Trevor, whose favorite niece
she was, she changed her dress and wandered into Katharine's room to
await her. What a great looking-glass Katharine had, she thought, and
how mature all the arrangements upon the dressing-table were compared to
what she was used to at home. Glancing round, she thought that the bills
stuck upon a skewer and stood for ornament upon the mantelpiece were
astonishingly like Katharine, There wasn't a photograph of William
anywhere to be seen. The room, with its combination of luxury and
bareness, its silk dressing-gowns and crimson slippers, its shabby
carpet and bare walls, had a powerful air of Katharine herself; she
stood in the middle of the room and enjoyed the sensation; and then,
with a desire to finger what her cousin was in the habit of fingering,
Cassandra began to take down the books which stood in a row upon the
shelf above the bed. In most houses this shelf is the ledge upon which
the last relics of religious belief lodge themselves as if, late at
night, in the heart of privacy, people, skeptical by day, find solace in
sipping one draught of the old charm for such sorrows or perplexities
as may steal from their hiding-places in the dark. But there was no
hymn-book here. By their battered covers and enigmatical contents,
Cassandra judged them to be old school-books belonging to Uncle Trevor,
and piously, though eccentrically, preserved by his daughter. There was
no end, she thought, to the unexpectedness of Katharine. She had once
had a passion for geometry herself, and, curled upon Katharine's quilt,
she became absorbed in trying to remember how far she had forgotten what
she once knew. Katharine, coming in a little later, found her deep in
this characteristic pursuit.

"My dear," Cassandra exclaimed, shaking the book at her cousin, "my
whole life's changed from this moment! I must write the man's name down
at once, or I shall forget--"

Whose name, what book, which life was changed Katharine proceeded to
ascertain. She began to lay aside her clothes hurriedly, for she was