lling into a state of fiery indignation over Carry's "ingratitude,"
and openly and shamelessly espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle.
"Why, if the half you tell me is true, your mother and those Robinsons
are making of you not only a little coward, but a little snob, miss.
Respectability, forsooth! Look you, my family are centuries before the
Trethericks; but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and then
asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them down the
wind;" and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black brows, and
glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van Corlear.

"You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.
Prince," said Carry.

In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way
into the virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as she
afterward expressed it, instantly "went for her."

First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one
shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like
a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely exaggerated
classic stride. "And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a
gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know that among a thousand
such traditional, conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers
as Mr. Harry Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent,
individualized gentleman like your Prince! Go to bed, miss, and pray
to Heaven that he may be YOUR Prince indeed. Ask to have a contrite and
grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent you
such a friend as Kate Van Corlear." Yet, after an imposing dramatic
exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white flash, kissed
Carry between the brows, and was gone.

The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince. He was convinced in his
mind that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness from
Mrs. Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal degree of
apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task. He would have tried to
divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but she was fearful that
Carry might come during her absence; and her strength, he was obliged to
admit, had failed greatly. As he looked into her large and awe-inspiring
clear eyes, a something he tried to keep from his mind--to put off day
by day from contemplation--kept asserting itself directly to his inner
consciousness. He began to doubt the exp