'I know that you have behaved like an angel, my child; I know your want of selfishness, your devotion to others, has been such as to shame me; I know your conduct has been perfect: oh, my Katie, I have understood it, and I have so loved you, so admired you.'

Katie smiled through her tears as she returned her mother's embrace. 'Well, mamma,' she said, 'at any rate you know that I love him. Oh, mamma, I do love him so dearly. It is not now like Gertrude's love, or Linda's. I know that I can never be his wife. I did know before, that for many reasons I ought not to wish to be so; but now I know I never, never can be.'

Mrs. Woodward was past the power of speaking, and so Katie went on.

'But I do not love him the less for that reason; I think I love him the more. I never, never, could have loved anyone else, mamma; never, never; and that is one reason why I do not so much mind being ill now.'

Mrs. Woodward bowed forward, and hid her face in the counterpane, but she still kept hold of her daughter's hand.

'And, mamma,' she continued, 'as I do love him so dearly, I feel that I should try to do something for him. I ought to do so; and, mamma, I could not be happy without seeing him. He is not just like a brother or a brother-in-law, such as Harry and Alaric; we are not bound to each other as relations are; but yet I feel that something does bind me to him. I know he doesn't love me as I love him; but yet I think he loves me dearly; and if I speak to him now, mamma, now that I am—that I am so ill, perhaps he will mind me. Mamma, it will be as though one came unto him from the dead.'

Mrs. Woodward did not know how to refuse any request that Katie might now make to her, and felt herself altogether unequal to the task of refusing this request. For many reasons she would have done so, had she been able; in the first place she did not think that all chance of Katie's recovery was gone; and then at the present moment she felt no inclination to draw closer to her any of the Tudor family. She could not but feel that Alaric had been the means of disgracing and degrading one child; and truly, deeply, warmly, as she sympathized with the other, she could not bring herself to feel the same sympathy for the object of her love. It was a sore day for her and hers, that on which the Tudors had first entered her house.

Nevertheless she assented to Katie's proposal, and undertook the task of asking Charley down to Hampton.

Since Alaric's conviction Charley led a busy life; and as men who have really something to do have seldom time to get into much mischief, he had been peculiarly moral and respectable. It is not surprising that at such a moment Gertrude found that Alaric's newer friends fell off from him. Of course they did; nor is it a sign of ingratitude or heartlessness in the world that at such a period of great distress new friends should fall off. New friends, like one's best coat and polished patent-leather dress boots, are only intended for holiday wear. At other times they are neither serviceable nor comfortable; they do not answer the required purposes, and are ill adapted to give us the ease we seek. A new coat, however, has this advantage, that it will in time become old and comfortable; so much can by no means be predicted with certainty of a new friend. Woe to those men who go through the world with none but new coats on their backs, with no boots but those of polished leather, with none but new friends to comfort them in adversity.

But not the less, when misfortune does come, are we inclined to grumble at finding ourselves deserted. Gertrude, though she certainly wished to see no Mrs. Val and no Miss Neverbends, did feel lonely enough when her mother left her, and wretched enough. But she was not altogether deserted. At this time Charley was true to her, and did for her all those thousand nameless things which a woman cannot do for herself. He came to her everyday after leaving his office, and on one excuse or another remained with her till late every evening.