KATHERINE STIRLING and her cousin, Hamilton, were seated together in the hall at Lynnthorpe; really its "living-room." It had an old oaken door opening on a wide terrace; deep window-seats; a huge fireplace; and antique furniture. The house was very old; and successive owners had reverently refrained from spoiling it by brand-new additions.

As usual, Hamilton was the talker, Katherine the listener. He loved a good listener; one who would submit to be convinced by his arguments; one who would not interrupt. Katherine was an adept at fulfilling this role.

He had talked for fifty minutes without a break; and he could very well have gone on for another fifty, had the Squire allowed Doris to turn homeward. Having laid down the law on foreign affairs, on home politics, and on the state of the money market, he proceeded to skim the fields of literature—if the word "skim" could be applied to any of his movements—and to recommend a well-thought-out course of geological study.

Katherine cared little for politics, less for the money market, least for ancient implements and extinct monsters. But she paid unwavering attention, because it was Hamilton who spoke. With many women the speaker matters far more than the thing spoken about.

The two were second-cousins and friends; not lovers. At least, Hamilton was not Katherine's lover, and perhaps never had been, though two or three years before this date some had looked upon him as tending that way. If so, he had made no further advance.

As for Katherine, he was and always had been for her the embodied type of all that a man should be. But she often told herself that she could not think of leaving her uncle to live alone; he so depended on her companionship. So perhaps she was in no great hurry for matters to ripen. It was enough for the present that Hamilton seemed to belong to her, consulted her, confided in her. She was placidly happy in the "friendship."

For Hamilton Stirling to "consult" anyone meant only that he wanted approval of what he had done. Since Katherine always did approve, he found in her what he wanted.

She was just thirty years old; and she looked her age, being pale, quiet, patrician to her very finger-tips. Many complained that she was proud and distant, and hard to know. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps she was proud—proud of her descent, of her blue blood, of her beautiful ancestral home, of her uncle. But if so, it was a humble and non-boasting type of pride; and she was also very shy, very 

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