return of Miss
Payne, who never staid in for any weather.

"Where do you think I have been?" asked Miss Payne, untying her bonnet
strings as she sat down.

"How can I guess? Your wanderings are various."

"I went to see Mrs. Needham, and I am very glad I did. I found her just
bursting with curiosity. All sorts of reports have got about respecting
your cousin and your loss of fortune, and she was enchanted to get the
whole truth from me. Besides, she has just been applied to by the
friends of a girl only sixteen to find a proper chaperon. She is full of
enthusiasm about us both, and begged me, and you too, to dine with her
the day after to-morrow to meet a Miss Bradley, the relative or friend
of the sixteen-year-old. We are to look at each other, and are supposed
to be in total ignorance of each other's identity. Mrs. Needham delights
in small plots and transparent mysteries."

"And why am I to go?" asked Katherine, carelessly.

"To make a fourth, and talk to the hostess while I discourse with Miss
Bradley."

"Very well; I will come."

"Any further news to-day?"

"Not a word; not a line."

CHAPTER XXVII.

A DINNER AT MRS. NEEDHAM'S.

Mrs. Needham was a very important at personage in her own estimation,
and very popular with a large circle of acquaintances. Most of them
thought she was a widow, and only a few old friends were aware that away
in a distant colony Needham masculine was hiding his diminished head
from creditors of various kinds and penalties of many descriptions, not
in penitence, but with as much of enjoyment as could be extracted from
the simple materials of antipodean life. Having taken with him all the
cash he could lay hands upon, his deserted wife was left to do battle
alone on a small income which was her own, and fortunately secured to
her on her marriage.

She was much too energetic to sit still when she might work and earn
money. The editor of a provincial paper, a friend of early days, gave
her space in his columns for a weekly letter, and an introduction to a
London _confrere_. On this slender foundation she built her humble
fortunes. There were, in truth, few happier women in London. Brimful of
interest in all the undertakings (and their name was legion) in which
she was concerned, kind and unselfish, though quite free from sentiment,
her life was full of movement and color. She had an enormous capacity
for absorbing the marvellous, quite uninfluenced by the natural
shrew