nglorious and wholly unheroic sort. And,
though he held his peace, Katherine feared for him--feared that the way
he elected to walk in was over-strait, and that, though resolution
would hold, health might be overstrained.

"My darling, you never grumble now," she had said to him a few days
back.

To which he answered:--

"Poor, dear mother, have I cheated you of one of your few, small
pleasures? Was it so very delightful to listen to that same grumbling?"

"I begin to believe it was," Katherine declared. "It conferred a unique
distinction upon me, you see, because I had a comfortable conviction
you grumbled to nobody else. One is jealous of distinction. Yes--I
think I miss it, Dickie."

Whereupon he laughed and kissed her, and swore he'd grumble fast enough
if there was anything--which positively there wasn't--to grumble about.
All of which, though it charmed Katherine, appeased her anxiety but
moderately. The young man worked too hard. His opportunities of
amusement were too scant. Katherine cast about in thought, and in
prayer, for some lightening of his daily life, even if such lightening
should lessen the completeness of his dependence upon herself. And it
was just at this juncture that Miss St. Quentin wrote proposing to come
to Brockhurst for a week. She had not been there since the Whitsuntide
recess. She wrote from Ormiston, where she was staying on her way
south, after paying a round of country-house visits in Scotland. It was
now late September. She would probably go to Cairo for the winter with
young Lady Tobermory--grandniece by marriage of her late godmother and
benefactress--whose lungs were pronounced to be badly touched. Might
she, therefore, come to Brockhurst to say good-bye?

And to this proposed visit Richard offered no opposition, though he
received the announcement of it without any marked demonstration of
pleasure.--Oh, by all means let her come! Of course it must be a
pleasure to his mother to have her. And he'd got on very well with her
in the spring--unquestionably he had.--Richard's expression was
slightly ironical.--But he did really like her?--Oh dear, yes, he liked
her exceedingly. She was quite curiously clever, and she was sincere,
and she was rather beautiful too, in her own style--he had always
thought that. By all means have her.--After which conversation Richard
went for a long ride, inspected cottages in building at Sandyfield,
visited a house, undergoing extensive, internal a