It was with passionate eagerness Nina set off in search of Kate. Why she
should have felt herself wronged, outraged, insulted even, is not so easy
to say, nor shall I attempt any analysis of the complex web of sentiments
which, so to say, spread itself over her faculties. The man who had so
wounded her self-love had been at her feet, he had followed her in her
walks, hung over the piano as she sang--shown by a thousand signs that sort
of devotion by which men intimate that their lives have but one solace, one
ecstasy, one joy. By what treachery had he been moved to all this, if he
really loved another? That he was simply amusing himself with the sort
of flirtation she herself could take up as a mere pastime was not to be
believed. That the worshipper should be insincere in his worship was too
dreadful to think of. And yet it was to this very man she had once turned
to avenge herself on Walpole's treatment of her; she had even said, 'Could
you not make a quarrel with him?' Now, no woman of foreign breeding puts
such a question without the perfect consciousness that, in accepting a
man's championship, she has virtually admitted his devotion. Her own levity
of character, the thoughtless indifference with which she would sport with
any man's affections, so far from inducing her to palliate such caprices,
made her more severe and unforgiving. 'How shall I punish him for this? How
shall I make him remember whom it is he has insulted?' repeated she over
and over to herself as she went.

The servants passed her on the stairs with trunks and luggage of various
kinds; but she was too much engrossed with her own thoughts to notice them.
Suddenly the words, 'Mr. Walpole's room,' caught her ear, and she asked,
'Has any one come?'

Yes, two gentlemen had just arrived. A third was to come that night, and
Miss O'Shea might be expected at any moment.

'Where was Miss Kate?' she inquired.

'In her own room at the top of the house.'

Thither she hastened at once.

'Be a dear good girl,' cried Kate as Nina entered, 'and help me in my many
embarrassments. Here are a flood of visitors all coming unexpectedly. Major
Lockwood and Mr. Walpole have come. Miss Betty will be here for dinner, and
Mr. Atlee, whom we all believed to be in Asia, may arrive to-night. I shall
be able to feed them; but how to lodge them with any pretension to comfort
is more than I can see.'

'I am in little humour to aid any one. I have my own troubles--worse