--"

"And some nice boys and girls to play with," cried Kitty, eagerly
following the new suggestion. "They are all coming here directly to dine
with me. You will stay and have dinner too, won't you?"

Randal promised to dine with Kitty when they met in London. Before he
left the room he pointed to his card on the table. "Let my friend see
that message," he said, as he went out.

The moment the door had closed on him, Mrs. Presty startled her daughter
by taking up the card and looking at what Randal had written on it.
"It isn't a letter, Catherine; and you know how superior I am to common
prejudices." With that defense of her proceeding, she coolly read the
message:

"I am sorry to say that I can tell you nothing more of your old friend's
daughter as yet. I can only repeat that she neither needs nor deserves
the help that you kindly offer to her."

Mrs. Presty laid the card down again and owned that she wished Randal
had been a little more explicit. "Who can it be?" she wondered. "Another
young hussy gone wrong?"

Kitty turned to her mother with a look of alarm. "What's a hussy?" she
asked. "Does grandmamma mean me?" The great hotel clock in the hall
struck two, and the child's anxieties took a new direction. "Isn't it
time my little friends came to see me?" she said.

It was half an hour past the time. Catherine proposed to send to Lady
Myrie and Mrs. Romsey, and inquire if anything had happened to cause the
delay. As she told Kitty to ring the bell, the waiter came in with two
letters, addressed to Mrs. Norman.

Mrs. Presty had her own ideas, and drew her own conclusions. She watched
Catherine attentively. Even Kitty observed that her mother's face
grew paler and paler as she read the letters. "You look as if you were
frightened, mamma." There was no reply. Kitty began to feel so uneasy on
the subject of her dinner and her guests, that she actually ventured on
putting a question to her grandmother.

"Will they be long, do you think, before they come?" she asked.

The old lady's worldly wisdom had passed, by this time from a state of
suspicion to a state of certainty. "My child," she answered, "they won't
come at all."

Kitty ran to her mother, eager to inquire if what Mrs. Presty had told
her could possibly be true. Before a word had passed her lips, she
shrank back, too frightened to speak.

Never, in her little experience, had she been startled by such a look
in her mother's face as the look that c