ly day in
November, at which she would herself undertake to meet Alice at the
Matching Station. On receipt of this letter, Alice, after two days'
doubt, accepted the invitation.

CHAPTER XIX

Tribute from Oileymead

Kate Vavasor, in writing to her cousin Alice, felt some little
difficulty in excusing herself for remaining in Norfolk with Mrs
Greenow. She had laughed at Mrs Greenow before she went to Yarmouth,
and had laughed at herself for going there. And in all her letters
since, she had spoken of her aunt as a silly, vain, worldly woman,
weeping crocodile tears, for an old husband whose death had released
her from the tedium of his company, and spreading lures to catch new
lovers. But yet she agreed to stay with her aunt, and remain with her
in lodgings at Norwich for a month.

But Mrs Greenow had about her something more than Kate had
acknowledged when she first attempted to read her aunt's character.
She was clever, and in her own way persuasive. She was very generous,
and possessed a certain power of making herself pleasant to those
around her. In asking Kate to stay with her she had so asked as to
make it appear that Kate was to confer the favour. She had told her
niece that she was all alone in the world. "I have money," she had
said, with more appearance of true feeling than Kate had observed
before. "I have money, but I have nothing else in the world. I have
no home. Why should I not remain here in Norfolk, where I know a few
people? If you'll say that you'll go anywhere else with me, I'll go
to any place you'll name." Kate had believed this to be hardly true.
She had felt sure that her aunt wished to remain in the neighbourhood
of her seaside admirers; but, nevertheless, she had yielded, and at
the end of October the two ladies, with Jeannette, settled themselves
in comfortable lodgings within the precincts of the Close at Norwich.

Mr Greenow at this time had been dead very nearly six months, but his
widow made some mistakes in her dates and appeared to think that the
interval had been longer. On the day of their arrival at Norwich it
was evident that this error had confirmed itself in her mind. "Only
think," she said, as she unpacked a little miniature of the departed
one, and sat with it for a moment in her hands, as she pressed her
handkerchief to her eyes, "only think, that it is barely nine months
since he was with me?"

"Six, you mean, aunt," said Kate, unadvisedly.

"Only nine months