subject I wished to speak to you about," Madame
replied. Then, shaking her head sadly, she continued: "Ah, Monsieur
Browne, you do not know what it is to love, and to love in vain. The
favour I am going to ask of you is that you should go away; that you
should not let Katherine see you again."

"But, madame," said Browne, "why should I go away? What if I love her
as you say she loves me?"

The lady uttered a little cry as if of astonishment.

"If you loved her all would be different," she cried, clasping her
hands together--"so very, very different."

"Then let it be as different as you please," cried Browne, springing to
his feet. "For I do love her, and with my whole heart and soul, as I
should have told her, had she not left London so suddenly the other
day."

Looking back on it now, Browne is obliged to confess that the whole
scene was theatrical in the extreme. Madame Bernstein, on hearing the
news, behaved with a most amiable eccentricity; she sprang from her
chair, and, taking his hand in hers, pressed it to her heart. If her
behaviour counted for anything, this would seem to have been the
happiest moment of her life. In the middle of it all the sound of a
light footstep reached them from the corridor outside.

"Hush!" said Madame Bernstein, holding up her finger in warning. "It
is Katherine! I implore you not to tell her that I have said this to
you."

"You may depend upon my not doing so," Browne answered.

An instant later the girl, whose happiness they appeared to be so
anxious to promote, entered the room. Her surprise and confusion at
finding Browne there may be better imagined than described. But if the
position were embarrassing for her, how much more so was it for Browne!
He stood before her like a schoolboy detected in a fault, and who waits
to be told what his punishment will be.

"Monsieur Browne was kind enough to take pity on my loneliness," said
Madame Bernstein, by way of explanation, but with a slight falter in
her voice which told the young man that, although she wished him to
think otherwise, she really stood in some awe of her companion. "We
have had a most interesting discussion on modern French art. I had no
idea that Monsieur Browne was so well acquainted with the subject."

"It is the one thing of all others in which I take the greatest
possible interest," replied Browne, with corresponding gravity. But he
dared not look at Katherine's face, for he knew she was re