was able to do everything herself that she asked others to do for her. Katty was a good gardener, an excellent cook, and an exceptionally clever dressmaker. Yet she was the last woman to make the mistake so many clever people make--of keeping a dog and doing the barking oneself. Katty was willing to show those she employed exactly how she wanted a thing done, but she expected them to learn how to do it quickly and intelligently. She had no use for the idle or the stupid.

Katty Winslow was thirty-one, but she looked much younger. She was an exceedingly pretty woman, with brown eyes, a delicately clear, white and pink complexion, and curling chestnut hair. She took great pains with her appearance, and with her health. Thus she ate and drank to rule, and almost walked to rule.

Early this last summer a bit of cruel bad luck had befallen Mrs. Winslow. She had caught scarlet fever while on a visit, and for some days had been very ill. But, perhaps as a result of the long, dull convalescence, she now looked even prettier, and yes, younger, than she had done before.

The only daughter of a well-connected but exceedingly poor half-pay officer, Katherine Fenton, during a girlhood which lasted till she was four-and-twenty, had been undisputed belle of Pewsbury, and of a country-side stretching far beyond the confines of that fine old county town. Like all beauties, she had had her triumphs and her disappointments; and then, rather suddenly, she had made what had seemed the irretrievable mistake of an unhappy marriage.

Bob Winslow had been weak, vain, ill-tempered, and, to a certain extent, vicious. Thus his relations had welcomed his marriage to a clever, capable young woman, who it was supposed would make, and keep, him straight. The fact that she had no fortune had been regarded as unimportant--indeed, Bob Winslow had made on his bride what was regarded in the Pewsbury world as the splendid marriage settlement of twelve thousand pounds.

Four and a half per cent, on that sum was now Mrs. Winslow's only income, and out of that income there were still being paid off heavy divorce costs, for Bob Winslow, when it had come to the point, had put up a great fight for his Katty. Not only had he defended the case, but he had brought on his side vague counter-charges. The Judge, rather unkindly, had observed that the petitioner had been "somewhat imprudent," but even so Katty had come out of the painful ordeal very well--so much was universally allowed, even by the few people in Pewsbury who had always disliked her, and who did not 

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