e sets. Then
followed the schottische, then another polka until everybody was tired
out, and then with one accord the young couples rushed from the hot
room, hazy with the dust of lint from the linen crash, and stampeded for
the cool wide stairs that led from the great hall. For while in summer
the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter
the stairs were generally the trysting-place--and the top step the one
most sought--because there was nobody behind to see. This was the roost
for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until
the music struck up again.

"Oh, Kate, you precious darling, how lovely you look!" burst out Harry
for the hundredth time when she had nestled down beside him--"and what a
wonderful gown! I never saw that one before, did I?"

"No--you never have," she panted, her breath gone from her dance and the
dash for the staircase. "It's my dear mother's dress, and her scarf too.
I had very little done to it--only the skirt made wider. Isn't it soft
and rich? Grandpa used to bring these satins from China."

"And the pearls--are they the ones you told me about?" He was adjusting
them to her throat as he spoke--somehow he could not keep his hands from
her.

"Yes--mother's jewels. Father got them out of his strong-box for me this
morning. He wanted me to wear them to-night. He says I can have them all
now. She must have been very beautiful, Harry--and just think, dear--she
was only a few years older than I am when she died. Sometimes when I
wear her things and get to thinking about her, and remember how young
and beautiful she was and how unhappy her life, it seems as if I must
be unhappy myself--somehow as if it were not right to have all this
happiness when she had none." There was a note of infinite pathos in her
voice--a note one always heard when she spoke of her mother. Had Harry
looked deeper into her eyes he might have found the edges of two tears
trembling on their lids.

"She never was as beautiful as you, my darling--nobody ever was--nobody
ever could be!" he cried, ignoring all allusion to her mother. Nothing
else counted with the young fellow to-night--all he knew and cared for
was that Kate was his very own, and that all the world would soon know
it.

"That's because you love me, Harry. You have only to look at her
portrait in father's room to see how exquisite she was. I can never be
like her--never so gracious, so patient, no matter how ha