There was a good fire in Katherine’s bedroom, and having declined the assistance of Mrs. Ormonde’s maid, she put on her dressing-gown and sat down beside it to think.  She was still quivering with the nervous excitement she had striven so hard and so successfully to conceal.

When Mrs. Ormonde had given her rapid explanation of who Errington was, and without a pause presented him, Katherine felt as if she must drop at his feet.  Indeed, she would have been thankful if a merciful insensibility had made her impervious to his questioning eyes. She well knew who he was.

He was the real owner of the property she now possessed.  The will she had suppressed bequeathed all John Liddell’s real and personal property to Miles Errington, only son of his old friend Arthur Errington, of Calton Buildings, London, E. C., and Calcutta.  She, the robber, stood in the presence of the robbed.  Did he know by intuition that she was guilty?  How grave and questioning his eyes were!  Why did he look at her like that?  How he would despise her and forbid his affianced wife to be outraged by her presence if he knew!

He looked like a high-minded gentleman.  If he seemed almost sternly grave, his smile was kind and frank, and she had made herself unworthy to associate with such men as he.

But he was rich.  He did not need the money she wanted so sorely.  What of that?  Did his abundance alter the everlasting conditions of right and wrong?  Perhaps if she had not attempted to play Providence for the sake of her family, and let things follow their natural course, Mr. Errington might have spared a few crumbs from his rich table—­a reasonable dole—­to patch up the ragged edges of their frayed fortunes.  Then she would not be oppressed with the sense of shame, this weight of riches she shrank from using.  She had murdered her own happiness; she had killed her own youth.  Never again could she know the joyousness of light-hearted girlhood, while nothing the world might give her could atone for the terrible trespass which had broken the harmony of her moral nature by the perpetual sense of unatoned wrong-doing.  How she wished she had never come to Castleford!  True, her seeing Mr. Errington did not make her guilt a shade darker, but oh, how much more keenly she felt it under his eyes!  And now she could not rush away.  She must avoid all eccentricities lest they might possibly arouse suspicion.  Suspicion?  What was there to suspect?  No one would dream of suspicion.  Then that will!  She would try and nerve herself to destroy it, though it seemed sacrilege to do so.  Whatever she did, however, she must think of Cis and Charlie.  Having committed such an act, her only course was to bear the consequences, and do her duty by the innocent children, whose fate would be cruel enough should she indulge in any weak repentance or seek relief in confession.  She had burdened herself with a disgraceful secret, and she must bear it her