ure that Katie was
giving him her silent farewell. While she dropped her eyes as if this
parting were not for strangers to watch, the shouts of the crowd on
shore and the cheers of the soldiers marked the widening space between
ship and shore.

When Mr. Royal's horses were turned about, Elizabeth found that Katie
Archdale had been almost directly behind. She was with her aunt and
uncle. Kenelm Waldo sat beside her, while Lord Bulchester with one foot
on the ground and the other on the step of the carriage, talked from the
opposite side. Katie turned readily from one to the other, and if she
intercepted an angry glance, her eyes grew brighter and her brilliant
smile deepened. Her laugh was not forced, it came with that musical
ripple which had always added so much to her fascination.

Elizabeth caught it as she passed with a bow, and a grave face. After
all, she thought, Katie could not have seen Mr. Archdale the moment
before.

CHAPTER XXIII.

KATIE ARCHDALE.

It was a beautiful morning, warmer than May mornings usually are in
Boston. But the warm sunshine that came into the drawing-room where
Katie Archdale was seated was unheeded. Katie was still at her uncle's
and that morning, as she had been very many mornings of late, was much
occupied with a visitor who sat on the sofa beside her with an
assumption of privilege which his diffident air at times failed to carry
out well.

"Are you quite sure, Lord Bulchester?" she asked. And her voice had a
touch of tremulousness, so inspiring to lovers.

"Sure? Am I sure?" he asked, his little figure expanding in his
earnestness, his face aglow with an emotion which gave dignity to his
plain features. "Sure that I love you?" he repeated wonderingly. "How
could anybody help it?"

"Then its not any especial discernment in you?" Her tones had the
softness of a coquetry about to lose itself in a glad submission to a
power higher than its own.

"No," he sighed. "And, yet, it is some special discernment. For, if not,
why should I love you better than anyone else does?"

"Do you?" The arch glance softened to suit his mood, half bewildered him
with ecstasy. To the music of them the drawing-room seemed to heighten
and broaden before his eyes, and to lengthen out into vistas of the
halls and parks of his own beautiful home, Lyburg Chase, and through
them all, Katie moved, and gave them a new charm. And, then, he seemed
to be in different places on the Continent, among the