course? I see you won t. But I don't see why,
nevertheless, I shouldn't insist to you once for all
on the plain truth of the whole matter. The truth,
my dear, of your duty. Do you ever think about
that? It's the greatest duty of all."

"There you are again," Kate laughed. " Papa's
also immense on my duty."

"Oh, I don't pretend to be immense, but I pre
tend to know more than you do of life; more even
perhaps than papa." Marian seemed to see that
personage at this moment, nevertheless, in the light
of a kinder irony. " Poor old papa!"

She sighed it with as many condonations as her
sister's ear had more than once caught in her " Dear
old Aunt Maud! " These were things that made
Kate, for the time, turn sharply away, and she gath
ered herself now to go. They were the note again
of the abject; it was hard to say which of the per
sons in question had most shown how little they
liked her. The younger woman proposed, at any
rate, to let discussion rest, and she believed that,
for herself, she had done so during the ten minutes
that, thanks to her wish not to break off short,
elapsed before she could gracefully withdraw. It
then appeared, however, that Marian had been dis
cussing still, and there was something that, at the
last, Kate had to take up. " Whom do you mean
by Aunt Maud's young man?"

"Whom should I mean but Lord Mark?"

"And where do you pick up such vulgar twad-

[[47]]

p046 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p047w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p048

v?