"Now try and get a little sleep," said Katherine, "your eyes look so weary. You want to stop thinking, and only sleep can still thought. When you wake you shall find some of the new magazines, and you must try and attend to them."
"I will, for your sake."
"Good-by, then, till to-morrow;" and having pressed her hand kindly, Katherine departed.
It was quite a triumph for Katherine to report her success to Bertie that evening. Miss Payne rather shook her head over the whole affair.
"I must say it puts me on edge altogether to hear you two rejoicing over this young woman's condescension in accepting the work you lay at her feet, while such crowds of starving wretches are begging and praying for something to do; and here is a mysterious young woman with lady-like manners and remarkable eyes, taken up all at once because she won't eat and refuses to speak. It isn't just. I suspect there is something in her past she does not like to tell."
"Your resume of the facts makes Mr. Payne and me seem rather foolish," said Katherine. "Yet I am convinced she is worth helping, and that no common methods will do to restore to her any relish for life. She interests me. I may be throwing away my time and money, but I will risk it."
"It is hard to say, of course, whether she is a deserving object or not," added Bertie, thoughtfully; "and I have been taken in more than once."
"More than once?" echoed his sister in a peculiar tone.
"Still, I feel with Miss Liddell that this girl's, Rachel Trant's, is not a common case," continued Bertie.
"Her very name is suggestive of grief," said Katherine, "and she, too, refuses to be comforted. I am sure she will tell me her story later. Her landlady says she never receives or sends a letter, and does not seem to have a creature belonging to her. Such desolation is appalling."