Vincent, what a pity! But if it's not to be printed, do you mind my
seeing the manuscript?"

"No; I'll let you have it some day, Sis, and you shall do what you like
with it." He sank into silence again.

"Where's Ted?" he asked suddenly.

"He'll be in soon; he wants to see you."

"Does he? How do you know that?" There was a look of suspicion in
Hardy's eyes as they glanced up. It was a symptom of his miserable
condition that he was apt to imagine slights.

"I've only his word for it, of course."

"Kathy----" he hesitated.

"Well?"

"There's something I wanted to tell him; but the fact is, I don't think
I've the pluck to do it."

"Never mind, then. Tell me if you can; though I think I know, and it's
all right."

"No, it isn't all right. I suppose you know he was pretty well off his
head about--that cousin of mine? I rather think he owed me one for being
before him, as he thought. At any rate, he cut me ever since--before I
took to the flowing bowl, too. You might tell him, if you think it would
be any satisfaction to him to know it, that she cared rather less for me
than she did for him; in fact, I believe there was some unhappy devil
that she preferred to either of us. At least a third man came into it
somewhere. There may be a fourth now, for anything I know."

There was a brutality about his calmness which surprised Katherine; she
could not realise the effect of the means he used for blunting his
sensibilities.

"You're quite mistaken. Ted hasn't any feeling of the sort. He simply
kept out of your way because he was afraid you'd think he had behaved
dishonourably; and of course he couldn't explain because of--Audrey. But
it wasn't his fault. He knew nothing."

"I never thought he did know. Do you suppose I blamed _him_, poor
beggar?"

All the same, Hardy slunk away soon after Ted came in. When Mrs. Rogers
came up with supper, she informed them that it was fine now--if you
could but trust it. And "Mr. 'Ardy 'ad gorn orf like a mad thing.
Temptin' Providence, I call it, without an umbrella."

Ted remarked, as they sat down to supper, that he thought "Providence
would have sufficient strength of mind to resist temptation; but he was
not so sure about Hardy."

And indeed Katherine had to own that her first experiment with Vincent
was a failure. But she struggled on, experience having taught her that
it is easier to do good original work of your own than to patch up what
other people have spoiled. On