"Oh, Miss Liddell!" exclaimed the governess, a younger, commoner-looking person than Katherine had chosen before she left England. "This is their bedroom," and she led Katherine through a door opposite the fireplace into an inner room. There in their little beds lay the boys who were all of kith or kin left to Katherine Liddell.

How lovingly she bent over and gazed at them!

Cecil had grown much. He looked sunburnt and healthy. One arm was thrown up behind his head, the other stretched straight and stiff beside him, ending in a closely clinched little brown fist. His lips, slightly apart, emitted the softly drawn regular breath of profound slumber, and the smile which some pleasant thought had conjured up before he closed his eyes still lingered round his mouth. Katherine longed to kiss him, but feared to break his profound and restful slumbers. She pa.s.sed to Charlie. His att.i.tude was quite different. He had thrown the clothes from his chest, and his pinky white throat was bare; one little hand lay open on the page of a picture-book at which he had been looking when sleep overtook him; the other was under his soft round cheek; his sweet and still baby face was grave if not sad. He looked like a little angel who had brought a message to earth, and was grieved and wearied by the sin and sorrow here below. Katherine's heart swelled with tenderest love as she gazed upon him, and unconsciously she bent closer till her lips touched his brow. Then a little hand stole into hers, and, without moving, as though he had expected her, he opened his eyes and whispered, "Will you come and kiss me every night, as grannie did?"

"I will, my darling, every night."

"Will grannie _never_ come and kiss me again?"

"Never, Charlie! She will never come to either of us in this life." A big tear fell on the boy's forehead.

"Don't cry, auntie; she loves us all the same." And he kissed the fair cheek which now lay against his own as his aunt knelt beside his bed.

"Go to sleep, dear love; to-morrow you shall take me to see your garden and the pony."

"You will be sure to come?"

"Yes, quite sure."

In a few minutes the clasp of the warm little hand relaxed, and Katherine gently disengaged herself.

"The boys are no longer first in their mother's heart," thought Katherine, as she returned to the drawing-room. "Were they ever first?

They are--they might become all the world to me. They might fill my life and give it a fresh aspect. The new ties at which Mr. Newton hinted can never exist for me. Could I accept an honorable man and live with a perpetual secret between us? Could I ever confess? No. My most hopeful scheme is to be a mother to these children. And oh! I do want to be happy, to feel the joy in life that used to lift up my spirit in the old days when we were struggling with poverty! I _will_ throw off this load of self-contempt. I have not really injured any one."

In the drawing-room Colonel Ormonde was seated beside Lady Alice, making conversation to the best of his ability. She looked serenely content, and held a piece of crochet, the kind of fancy-work which occupied the young ladies in the "sixties." The rector and Mr. Errington were in deep conversation on the hearth-rug, and Mrs. Ormonde was reading the paper.

"So you have been visiting the nursery?" said the Colonel, rising and offering Katherine a chair. "Your first introduction to our young man, I suppose?"

"Yes. What a great boy he is!--the picture of health!"

"Ay, he is a Trojan," complacently. "The other little fellows are looking well, eh?"

"Very well indeed. Cis is wonderfully grown; but Charlie is much what he was."

"He'll overtake his brother, though, before long," said Colonel Ormonde, encouragingly, as he rang and ordered the card-table to be set.

"You play whist, I suppose? We want a fourth."

"I am quite ignorant of that fascinating game," returned Katherine, "and very sorry to be so useless."

"It _is_ lamentable ignorance! Lady Alice, will you take compa.s.sion on us? No?--then we _must_ have Errington."

Errington did not seem at all reluctant, and the two young ladies were left to entertain each other.

Katherine, who had gone to the other end of the room to look at some water-color drawings, came back and sat down beside her. Lady Alice looked amiable, but did not speak, and Katherine felt greatly at a loss what to say.

"What very fine work!" she said at length, watching the small, weak-looking hands so steadily employed.

"Yes, it is a very difficult pattern. My aunt, Lady Mary, never could manage it, and she does a great deal of crochet, and is very clever."

"It seems most complicated. I am sure I could never do it."

"Do you crochet much?"

"Not at all."

"Then," with some appearance of interest, "what _do_ you do?"

"Oh! various things; but I am afraid I am not industrious. I would rather mend my clothes than do fancy work."

"Mend your clothes!" repeated Lady Alice, in unfeigned amazement.

"Yes. I a.s.sure you there is great pleasure in a symmetrical patch."

"But does not your maid do that?"

"Now that I have one, she does. However, you must show me how to crochet, if you will be so kind; my only approach to fancy-work is knitting. I can knit stockings. Isn't that an achievement?"

"But is it not tiresome?"

"Oh! I can knit like the Germans, and talk or read."

"Is it possible?" A long pause.

"Mrs. Ormonde says you are very learned and studious," said Lady Alice, languidly.

"How cruel of her to malign me!" returned Katherine, laughing. "Learned I certainly am not; but I am fond of indiscriminate reading, though not studious."

"I like a nice novel, with dreadful people in it, like Miss St. Maur's.

Have you read any of hers?"

"I don't think so. I do not know the name."

"The St. Maurs are Devonshire people--a very old country family, I believe. Still, when she writes about the season in London, I don't think it is very like." Another pause.

"You have been in Italy, I think, Lady Alice?" recommenced Katherine.

"Oh yes, often. Papa is always cruising about, you know, and we stop at places. But I have never been in Rome."

"Yachting must be delightful."

"I do not like it; I am always ill. Aunt Mary took me to Florence for a winter."

"Then you enjoyed that, I dare say," said Katherine.

"I got tired of it. I do not care for living abroad; there is nothing to do but to go to picture-galleries and theatres."

"Well, that is a good deal," returned Katherine, smiling. "Where do you like to live, Lady Alice?"