"About my dinner-party to-morrow. Oh," said the child, clasping
her hands earnestly as she thought of her playfellows, "I do so
hope it will go off well!"



Chapter XXXIV.


Mrs. Presty.


Belonging to the generation which has lived to see the Age of
Hurry, and has no sympathy with it, Mrs. Presty entered the
sitting-room at the hotel, two hours before the time that had
been fixed for leaving Sandyseal, with her mind at ease on the
subject of her luggage. "My boxes are locked, strapped and
labeled; I hate being hurried. What's that you're reading?" she
asked, discovering a book on her daughter's lap, and a hasty
action on her daughter's part, which looked like trying to hide
it.

Mrs. Norman made the most common, and--where the object is to
baffle curiosity--the most useless of prevaricating replies. When
her mother asked her what she was reading she answered:
"Nothing."

"Nothing!" Mrs. Presty repeated with an ironical assumption of
interest. "The work of all others, Catherine, that I most want to
read." She snatched up the book; opened it at the first page, and