play, whether they
will or no, with fate. Mrs. Ormiston, still young and beloved, had died
in bringing this, her only daughter, into the world; and her husband
had looked somewhat coldly upon the poor baby in consequence. There was
an almost misanthropic vein in the autocratic land-owner and
iron-master. He had three sons already, and therefore found but little
use for this woman-child. So, while pluming himself on his clear
judgment and unswerving reason, he resented, most unreasonably, her
birth, since it took his wife from him. Such is the irony of things,
forever touching man on the raw, proving his weakness in that he holds
his strongest point! In point of fact, however, Katherine suffered but
slightly from the poor welcome that greeted her advent in the gray,
many-towered house upon the Yorkshire coast. For her great-aunt, Mrs.
St. Quentin, speedily gathered the small creature into her still
beautiful arms, and lavished upon it both tenderness and wealth,
along--as it grew to a companionable age--with the wisdom of a mind
ripened by wide acquaintance with men and with public affairs. Mrs. St.
Quentin--famous in Dublin, London, Paris, as a beauty and a wit--had
passed her early womanhood amid the tumult of great events. She had
witnessed the horrors of the Terror, the splendid amazements of the
First Empire; and could still count among her friends and
correspondents, politicians and literary men of no mean standing. A
legend obtains that Lord Byron sighed for her--and in vain. For, as
Katherine came to know later, this woman had loved once, daringly,
finally, yet without scandal--though the name of him whom she loved
(and who loved her) was not, it must be owned, St. Quentin. And perhaps
it was just this, this hidden and somewhat tragic romance, which kept
her so young, so fresh; kept her unworldly, though moving so freely in
the world; had given her that exquisite sense of relative values and
that knowledge of the heart, which leads, as the divine Plato has
testified, to the highest and most reconciling philosophy.

Thus, the delicately brilliant old lady and the radiant young lady
lived together delightfully enough, spending their winters in Paris in
a pretty apartment in the rue de Rennes--shared with one Mademoiselle
de Mirancourt, whose friendship with Mrs. St. Quentin dated from their
schooldays at the convent of the Sacre Coeur. Spring and autumn found
Katherine and her great-aunt in London. While, in summer