reed to pay Miss Payne handsomely for taking charge of the
orphan. Her first _protegee_ married well, under her auspices, and from
henceforth her house was rarely empty. Sometimes she accepted a roving
commission and travelled with her charge, meanwhile letting her house in
town, so making a double profit. It was on one of these expeditions that
she was introduced to Mrs. and Miss Liddell. There was an air of
sincerity and common-sense about the composed elderly gentlewoman which
rather attracted the former, and, when they met again in Paris, Miss
Payne came to Katie in her trouble and proved a brave and capable nurse;
nor was she unsympathetic, though far from effusive. So, finding that
Miss Payne's last young lady had left her, Katherine, with the approval
of Mr. Newton, proposed to become her inmate for a year--an arrangement
entirely in accordance with Miss Payne's wishes.

"I did not know you were acquainted with Miss Liddell," she said one
evening when she was sitting with her brother, Katherine having retired
early, as she often did. "It is quite a surprise to me."

"I can hardly say I am acquainted with her; I happened to be of some
slight use to her once, and I met her after by accident, when we spoke;
that is all."

"I wonder she did not mention it to me."

"I imagine she hardly knew my name." Miss Payne uttered an inarticulate
sound between a h'm and a groan, by which she generally expressed
indefinite dissent and disapprobation. Then she rose and walked to the
dwarf bookcase at the end of the room to fetch her tatting. She was tall
and slight. Following her, you might imagine her young, for her figure
was good and her step brisk. Meeting her face to face, her pale,
slightly puckered cheeks, closely compressed lips, keen light eyes, and
crisp pepper-and-salt hair--Cayenne pepper, for it had once been
red--suggested at least twenty or twenty-five additional years as
compared with the back view.

Returning to her seat, she began to tat, slowing drawing each knot home
with a reflective air.

"That woman is hunting her up," she exclaimed suddenly, after a few
minutes' silence, during which Bertie looked thoughtfully at the
fire--his quiet face, with its look of unutterable peace, the strongest
possible contrast to his sister's hard, shrewd aspect.

"What woman?" asked, as if recalled from a dream.

"Mrs. Ormonde. There was a telegram from her this afternoon. She has
been worrying Miss Liddell to go to th