'You were just going to use a stronger term of opprobrium!'

'Yes, dreadful slang. I checked myself for once, just because I am in real earnest. Oh, I am grateful to you! I want to learn to be of use to you,—to repay some of your goodness to me; please teach me to be a satisfactory companion in every way but that of flattery!'

There were tears sparkling in the brown eyes now, and a sweet pleading expression on the whole face. Mrs. Arderne, being a woman of the world, did not show how much she was touched, and answered laughingly,—

'Catherine, you are beautiful! Why did you spoil all my best plans for you by getting engaged to Brian North?'

A series of dimples played round the girl's lips. She put her hands behind her back, dropped a curtsey, after the manner of charity children before a benefactress, and blushed.

'Please, ma'am, I think it was because—I love him.'

'Romantic nonsense! My dear, you could as easily have loved another man. Mr. North is not a paragon of every virtue and charm. He happened to love you, and so, soft-heartedly, you tried to pay him back for love, just as you want to pay me back because I offered you a home when you were in want of one.'

'You didn't try to patronise me. You came to me, and spoke like the dear true woman you are, as a sister might have spoken; and you burdened yourself, or rather let me burden you, with an untrained, wild, hot-tempered girl, an individual who knew simply nothing of etiquette, whose manners were all learned in the Bush! That is a gentle description of me,—you know it is! And I don't believe you needed a companion at all!'

'I have learned to appreciate the advantages of possessing one, then. But seriously, Catherine, have you no expectations at all? Who is this uncle, who lives in this neighbourhood, to whom you were writing this afternoon?'

'Uncle Ross, or Uncle Jack—which do you mean? I wrote to them both. Oh, Uncle Ross, I suppose, for he is the elder. He is Ross Carmichael, Esq., of Carm Hall, Beverbridge, and he used to be very nice to me when I was a child. He and Uncle Jack came out to Australia once, years ago, before they quarrelled, and I have written to them every Christmas ever since.... Uncle Jack was quite a darling!'