Katharine Frensham

e you finished the famous historical picture of the unhistoric meeting between Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots? I should like to think that you have finish

have missed you fearfully. Everybody has missed you. Even that duffer Ronald, infatuated as he is with that idiot Gwendolen, even he has had the sense to miss you. By Jove, though, he is altered! Not the same fellow at all. I never go to his home. Don't care to meet those pretentious asses of people whom Gwendolen th

ese weird people, and likes to entertain them. Ronnie has nothing in common with them, but he worships Gwendolen, and loves to please her, and so he has persuaded himself that it is the right thing to keep in and up with them. Perhaps it is, from

live with us. That's the proper place for you un

and said in excuse that she was still feeling a wanderer to whom a home was not yet necessary. They did not coerce her, knowing her love of freedom, and knowing a

ad gone. They had both been together at one of those prehistoric private schools,

ere speaking about old times. "I always thought vaguely one could make that up somehow or other,

illy said. "You'd soon forget that you had been starved at sch

e proposes," Mrs Tonedale said, laughing.

or a picture of the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots," said Katharine, smiling. "I thin

y. "Same question, same answe

instead of 'No.' What would you do th

uld go out of my sens

've got," she replied. "You know I've always s

ickly. I'm quite willing to own that it doesn't work quickly. It never cou

swered. "It would se

y a quick one will do the trick," he said. "Where's th

said. "But I think there are plenty of other wome

is moustache. "But I want the

e said. "Our temperaments

t!" he said reckless

t," she answered. "I s

ll begin on her eternal subject: a dead friend who was done to death by her husband's temperamental cruelty. And mother and Margaret will listen in rapt delight. And if any one fresh is here, she tells the whole

ce. She was received by Margaret Tonedale, and joined the little group of friends who had come

tly. She wondered afterwards why she had asked. It was nothing to

"I ought to know, considering I've heard it about a m

rose fro

and she took a chair not far off from Mrs

said. "Besides, what good does she do to her dead friend? The wh

ith a slight flush on her face,

l the unhappiness which remorse can measure out to him. He wrecked and ruined my poor friend's life. She was high-spirited and full of noble emotions. She had a fine natural disposition which he never even tried to understand. He never spared a thought to her. His thoughts were for himself, his work, and his son. I will do him the justice to say th

oment, and Willy T

t she had a most fearful temper. No fell

anced at him st

h; and, if she became a little hasty as the years went on, it was only right that she should have w

f Marianne were anything like cousin Julia

She was doomed from the beginning. She had no chance against that man's cruel neglect a

she remained silent, although increasingl

inquest, they had had some miserable scene together, and he, no doubt to recover from his own outbreak of anger, went off riding, leaving her to right herself as well as she could. He knew that she had a delicate heart, and that she was always jeopardised by over-excitation. All this he knew wel

ering. But she herself leaned back as if resting from a newly accomplished task and well-earne

tharine

ve that Professor Thornton is a cruel man. He may have made mistakes, and probably did d

tenseness in her manner. She looked as one who had divined some advancing danger, and was

n, Kath?" Willy and Margaret e

he is incapable of cruelty-physical, ment

years," said Mrs Stanhope i

But with what you would call 'temperamental knowledge,' Mrs Sta

stranger," Mrs Stanhope remarked. "He is

her steadily for a m

ranger to defend him, if you go about the

Frensham," Mrs Stanhope said, flu

ry outside world would be in th

mental murders, and all that sort of confounded subtleness. Torture is torture, and murder is murder to the outside world of ord

aid with a short, nervous laugh. "No doub

et, Willy, and the three or four visitors now looked towards Katharine again, wonderin

does not need to be warned. For at least Mrs

n the dark; supposing that out of mistaken loyalty to her dead friend's memory, she believed it to be a solemn duty to tell her version of the story to the y

t Mrs Stanhope was

fair to my poor Marianne's memory that he should l

feeling that she ought to have followed her to her very door, and thus have made sure that Marianne's avenging colleague wrought no harm that afternoon to th

d give her a ducking in the Serpentine," sai

ine la

becoming quite electrically inte

f mine always rouses my indignation. Shades of my ancestors, what a to

" Katharine said, turning to him

strangers-that's all. Can't let yourself be torn in pieces for strangers. B

, with a sudden th

nd saw a light on her face whic

rept into his