uld have done, and ever
so much more beside. There is no knowing how much work such a boy
will do when properly drilled, and he was now Kate's best minister in
her distress. There was the old nurse,--but she had been simply good
for nursing, and there were two rough Westmoreland girls who called
themselves cook and housemaid.

On that first evening,--the very day on which her grandfather had
died,--Kate would have been more comfortable had she really found
something that she could do. But there was in truth nothing. She
hovered for an hour or two in and out of the room, conscious of the
letter which she had in her pocket, and very desirous in heart of
reading it, but restrained by a feeling that at such a moment she
ought to think only of the dead. In this she was wrong. Let the
living think of the dead, when their thoughts will travel that way
whether the thinker wish it or no. Grief taken up because grief is
supposed to be proper, is only one degree better than pretended
grief. When one sees it, one cannot but think of the lady who asked
her friend, in confidence, whether hot roast fowl and bread-sauce
were compatible with the earliest state of weeds; or of that other
lady,--a royal lady she,--who was much comforted in the tedium of her
trouble when assured by one of the lords about the Court that piquet
was mourning.

It was late at night, near eleven, before Kate took out her letter
and read it. As something of my story hangs upon it, I will give it
at length, though it was a long letter. It had been written with
great struggles, and with many tears, and Kate, as she read it to the
end, almost forgot that her grandfather was lying dead in the room
above her.

Queen Anne Street, April, 186--.

DEAREST KATE,

I hardly know how to write to you--what I have to tell,
and yet I must tell it. I must tell it to you, but I shall
never repeat the story to any one else. I should have
written yesterday, when it occurred, but I was so ill that
I felt myself unable to make the exertion. Indeed, at one
time, after your brother had left me, I almost doubted
whether I should ever be able to collect my thoughts
again. My dismay was at first so great that my reason for
a time deserted me, and I could only sit and cry like an
idiot.

Dear Kate, I hope you will not be angry with me for
telling you. I have endeavoured to think about it as
calmly as I can, and I believe that I have