room. She was standing
at the piano, with a page of music in her hand. The page was upside
down--and she had placed herself in a position which concealed her face.
Slow as Mrs. Linley was to doubt any person (more especially a person
who interested her), she left the room with a vague fear of something
wrong, and with a conviction that she would do well to consult her
husband.

Hearing the door close, Sydney looked round. She and Kitty were alone
again; and Kitty was putting away her books without showing any pleasure
at the prospect of a holiday.

Sydney took the child fondly in her arms. "Would you be very sorry,"
she asked, "if I was obliged to go away, some day, and leave you?"
Kitty turned pale with terror at the dreadful prospect which those words
presented. "There! there! I am only joking," Sydney said, shocked at
the effect which her attempt to suggest the impending separation had
produced. "You shall come with me, darling; we will walk in the park
together."

Kitty's face brightened directly. She proposed extending their walk
to the paddock, and feeding the cows. Sydney readily consented. Any
amusement was welcome to her which diverted the child's attention from
herself.

They had been nearly an hour in the park, and were returning to the
house through a clump of trees, when Sydney's companion, running on
before her, cried: "Here's papa!" Her first impulse was to draw back
behind a tree, in the hope of escaping notice. Linley sent Kitty away to
gather a nosegay of daisies, and joined Sydney under the trees.

"I have been looking for you everywhere," he said. "My wife--"

Sydney interrupted him. "Discovered!" she exclaimed.

"There is nothing that need alarm you," he replied. "Catherine is too
good and too true herself to suspect others easily. She sees a change in
you that she doesn't understand--she asks if I have noticed it--and that
is all. But her mother has the cunning of the devil. There is a serious
reason for controlling yourself."

He spoke so earnestly that he startled her. "Are you angry with me?" she
asked.

"Angry! Does the man live who could be angry with you?"

"It might be better for both of us if you _were_ angry with me. I have
to control myself; I will try again. Oh, if you only knew what I suffer
when Mrs. Linley is kind to me!"

He persisted in trying to rouse her to a sense of the danger that
threatened them, while the visitors remained in the house. "In a few
days, Sydney,