ng that Mrs. Lennox was below and wished to see her. She
had grown accustomed to the desire of strangers to be presented to her,
for, as Dermott had told her, the news of her voice was already
newspaper copy. In the drawing-room she found Madame de Nemours by the
window talking animatedly, in her pleasant, low voice, to a lady, young
and vivacious, wearing aggressive mourning.

"And this," the stranger cried, in a high, strong, musical voice, coming
forward, "is the Miss Dulany of whom I have been hearing such wonderful
things?" She waited for no response. "I have just been telling the
Countess that I almost met you at Ravenel House, in Carolina, over two
years ago. There was a house-party, and you refused to come."

Katrine flushed and turned pale again suddenly, as she realized that
this was the Mrs. Lennox whom, by current gossip, Frank was to marry,
and she lived over again in an instant, it seemed, the morning when she
had met them riding together by the ford at Ravenel.

"I was ill, I remember," Katrine explained, recovering herself;
"unfortunately ill, since I was prevented from meeting you." There was
both consideration and compliment in her tone.

"Everything has changed a great deal since then," Mrs. Lennox went on,
"with me as well as with others. I lost my mother the following winter,"
she glanced at her mourning as she spoke, "and Mrs. Ravenel has been
back to the old place but once, for a few weeks only. Mr. Ravenel (you
remember Mr. Ravenel?) has gone in for all sorts of things since then.
Nobody knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself
down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and
sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks
definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been
telling the Countess of him."

"I do not know Mr. van Rensselaer," said Katrine.

"What!" Mrs. Lennox cried, with amazement. "I thought you met him at
Ravenel! I understood he heard you sing there, and it was because of it
that he wanted to send you abroad to study."

"If it be Mr. van Rensselaer who has been so kind to me, I do not know
it," Katrine answered, in no small degree annoyed by this enforced
intimacy. "I have never seen him nor heard his name before in my life."

If Mrs. Lennox noted Katrine's manner she was in nowise deterred by it
from going deeper into the subject.

"Mrs. Ravenel told me," she continued, with exciteme