e and friendless? will you desert me?"

"Oh, never, never!" cried Kate, kissing her hand and pressing her to her
heart. "I would willingly lay down my life to avert this sad misfortune;
but, if that cannot be, I will share your lot with the devotion of my
whole heart."

Lady Hester could scarcely avoid smiling at the poor girl's simplicity,
who really fancied that separation included a life of seclusion and
sorrow, with restricted means and an obscure position; and it was with
a kind of subdued drollery she assured Kate that even in her altered
fortunes a great number of little pleasures and comforts would remain
for them. In fact, by degrees the truth came slowly out, that the great
change implied little else than unrestrained liberty of action, freedom
to go anywhere, know any one, and be questioned by nobody; the
equivocal character of the position adding a piquancy to the society,
inexpressibly charming to all those who, like the Duchesse d'Abrantes,
think it only necessary for a thing to be "wrong" to make it perfectly
delightful.

Having made a convert of Kate, Lady Hester briefly replied to Sir
Stafford, that his proposition was alike repugnant to Miss Dalton as to
herself, that she regretted the want of consideration on his part, which
could have led him to desire that she should be friendless at a time
when the presence of a companion was more than ever needed. This done,
she kissed Kate three or four times affectionately, and retired to
her room, well satisfied with what the day had brought forth, and only
wishing for the morrow, which should open her new path in life.

It often happens in life that we are never sufficiently struck with
the force of our own opinions or their consequences, till, from
some accident or other, we come to record them. Then it is that the
sentiments we have expressed, and the lines of action adopted, suddenly
come forth in all their unvarnished truth. Like the images which the
painter, for the first time, commits to canvas, they stand out
to challenge a criticism which, so long as they remained in mere
imagination, they had escaped.

This was precisely Kate Dalton's case now. Her natural warm-heartedness,
and her fervent sense of gratitude, had led her to adopt Lady Hester's
cause as her own; generous impulses, carrying reason all before them,
attached her to what she fancied to be the weaker side. "The divinity
that doth hedge--" "beauty--" made her believe that so much loveli