The next morning the new world began frankly, as if it was nothing out of the usual, as if it had already been for years. When Katherine, a little late after her somewhat melancholy vigils, awoke, she heard already the bustle of the houseful of people, so different from the stillness which had been the rule for years. She heard doors opening and shutting, steps moving everywhere, Sir Charles’ voice calling loudly from below, the loud tinkling of Stella’s bell, which rang upstairs near her maid’s room. Katherine’s first instinctive thought was a question whether that maid would look less worried—whether, poor thing, she had dreamt of bags and bandboxes all night. And then there came the little quaver, thrilling the air of a child’s cry; poor little dissipated Job, after his vigil with his father, crying to be awoke so early—the poor little boy who had tried to kick at her with his little naked feet, so white in the dimness of the corridor, on the night before. It was with the strangest sensation that Katherine got hurriedly out of bed, with a startled idea that perhaps her room might be wanted, in which there was no reason. At all events, the house had passed into new hands, and was hers no more.

Hannah came to her presently, pale and holding her breath. She had seen Job fly at the ayah, kicking her with the little feet on which she had just succeeded in forcing a pair of boots. “He said as now he could hurt her, as well as I could understand his talk. Oh! Miss Katherine, and such a little teeny boy, and to do that! But I said as I knew you would never let a servant be kicked in your house.”

“Neither will my sister, Hannah—but they are all tired and strange, and perhaps a little cross,” said Katherine, apologetically. She went downstairs to find the breakfast-table in all the disorder that arises after a large meal—the place at which little Job had been seated next to his father littered by crumbs and other marks of his presence, and the butler hastily bringing in a little tea-pot to a corner for her use.

“Sir Charles, Miss Katherine, he’s gone out; he’s inspecting of the horses in the stables; and my lady has had her breakfast in her room, and it’s little master as has made such a mess of the table.”

“Never mind, Harrison,” said Katherine.

“I should like to say, Miss Katherine,” said Harrison, “as I’ll go, if you please, this day month.”

“Oh, don’t be in a hurry!” she cried. “I have been speaking to Mrs. Simmons. Don’t desert the house in such haste. Wait till you see how things go on.”

“I’d stay with you Miss Katherine, to the last hour of my life; and I don’t know as I couldn’t make up my mind to a medical gentleman’s establishment, though it’s different to what I’ve been used to—but I couldn’t never stop in a place like this.”

“You don’t know in the least what is going to happen here. Please go now, and leave me to my breakfast. I will speak to you later on.”

A woman who is the mistress of her own house is compelled to endure these attacks, but a woman suddenly freed from all the responsibilities of ownership need not, at least, be subject to its drawbacks. Katherine took her small meal with the sensation that it was already the bread of others she was eating, which is always bitter. There had been no account made of her usual place, of any of her habits. Harrison had hastily arranged for her that corner at the lower end of the table, because of the disarray at the other, the napkins flung about, the cloth dabbled and stained. It was her own table no longer. Any philosophic mind will think of this as a very trifling thing, but it was not trifling to Katherine. The sensation of entire disregard, indifference to her comfort, and to everything that was seemly, at once chilled and irritated her; and then she stopped herself in her uncomfortable thoughts with a troubled laugh and the question, was she, indeed, with her strong objection to all this disorder, fitting herself, as Stella said, for the position of maiden aunt? One thing was certain at least, that for the position of dependent she never would be qualified.

It was a mild and bright October day: the greyness of the afternoon had not as yet closed in, the air was full of mid-day sunshine and life. Sir Charles had come in from his inspection of “the offices” and all that was outside. He had come up, with his large step and presence, to the dressing-room in which Stella, wrapped in a quilted dressing-gown and exclaiming at the cold, lay on a sofa beside the fire. She had emerged from her bath and all those cares of the person which precede dressing for the day, and was resting before the final fatigue of putting on her gown. Katherine had been admitted only a few minutes before Sir Charles appeared, and she had made up her mind that at last her communication must be fully made now; though it did not seem very necessary, for they had established themselves with such perfect ease in the house believing it to be hers, that it would scarcely make any difference when they were made aware that it was their own. Katherine’s mind, with a very natural digression, went off into an unconsciously humorous question—what difference, after all, it would have made if the house and the fortune had been hers? They would have taken possession just the same, it was evident, in any case—and she, could she ever have suggested to them to go away. She decided no, with a rueful amusement. She should not have liked Sir Charles as the master of her house, but she would have given in to it. How much better that it should be as it was, and no question on the subject at all!

“I want you to let me tell you now about papa’s will.”

“Poor papa!” said Stella. “I hope he was not very bad. At that age they get blunted, and don’t feel. Oh, spare me as many of the details as you can, please! It makes me wretched to hear of people being ill.”

“I said papa’s will, Stella.”

“Ah!” she cried, “that’s different. Charlie will like to know. He thinks you’ve done nicely for us, Katherine. Of course many things would have to be re-modelled if we stopped here; but in the meantime, while we don’t quite know what we are going to do——”

“I’d sell those old screws,” said Sir Charles, “they’re not fit for a lady to drive. I shouldn’t like to see my wife behind such brutes. If you like to give me carte blanche I’ll see to it—get you something you could take out Stella with, don’t you know!”

“I wish,” said Katherine, with a little impatience, “that you would allow me to speak, if it were only for ten minutes! Stella, do pray give me a little attention; this is not my house, it is yours—everything is yours. Do you hear? When papa died nothing was to be found but the will of ’seventy-one, which was made before you went away. Everybody thought he had changed it, but he had not changed it. You have got everything, Stella, everything! Do you hear? Papa did not leave even a legacy to a servant, he left nothing to me, nothing to his poor brother—everything is yours.”

Sir Charles stood leaning on the mantelpiece, with his back to the fire; a dull red came over his face. “Oh, by Jove!” he said in his moustache. Stella raised herself on her pillows. She folded her quilted dressing-gown, which was Chinese and covered with wavy lines of dragons, over her chest.

“What do you mean by everything?” she said. “You mean a good bit of money, I suppose; you told me so yesterday. As for the house, I don’t much care for the house, Kate. It is rococo, you know; it is in dreadful taste. You can keep it if you like. It could never be of any use to us.”

“It isn’t a bad house,” said Sir Charles. He had begun to walk up and down the room. “By Jove,” he said, “Stella is a cool one, but I’m not so cool. Everything left to her? Do you mean all the money, all old Tredgold’s fortune—all! I say, by Jove, don’t you know. That isn’t fair!”

“I don’t see why it isn’t fair,” said Stella; “I always knew that was what papa meant. He was very fond of me, poor old papa! Wasn’t he, Kate? He used to like me to have everything I wanted: there wasn’t one thing, as fantastic as you please, but he would have let me have it—very different from now. Don’t you remember that yacht—that we made no use of but to run away from here? Poor old man!” Here Stella laughed, which Katherine took for a sign of grace, believing and hoping that it meant the coming of tears. But no tears came. “He must have been dreadfully sorry at the end for standing out as he did, and keeping me out of it,” she said with indignation, “all these years.”

Sir Charles kept walking up and down the room, swearing softly into his moustache. He retained some respect for ladies in this respect, it appeared, for the only imprecation which was audible was a frequent appeal to the father of the Olympian gods. “By Jove!” sometimes “By Jupiter!” he said, and tugged at his moustache as if he would have pulled it out. This was the house in which, bewildered, he had taken all the shillings from his pocket and put them down on the table by way of balancing Mr. Tredgold’s money. And now all Mr. Tredgold’s money was his. He was not cool like Stella; a confused vision of all the glories of this world—horses, race-meetings, cellars of wine, entertainments of all kinds, men circling about him, not looking down upon him as a poor beggar but up at him as no end of a swell, servants to surround him all at once like a new atmosphere. He had expected something of the kind at the time of his marriage, but those dreams had long abandoned him; now they came back with a rush, not dreams any longer. Jove, Jupiter, George (whoever that deity may be) he invoked in turns; his blood took to coursing in his veins, it felt like quicksilver, raising him up, as if he might have floated, spurning with every step the floor on which he trod.

“I who had always been brought up so different!” cried Stella, with a faint whimper in her voice. “That never had been used to it! Oh, what a time I have had, Kate, having to give up things—almost everything I ever wanted—and to do without things, and to be continually thinking could I afford it. Oh, I wonder how papa had the heart! You think I should be grateful, don’t you? But I can’t help remembering that I’ve been kept out of it, just when I wanted it most, all these years——”

She made a pause, but nobody either contradicted or agreed with her. Stella expected either the one or the other. Sir Charles went up and down swearing by Jupiter and thinking in a whirl of all the fine things before him, and Katherine sat at the end of the sofa saying nothing. In sheer self-defence Stella had to begin again.

“And nobody knows what it is beginning a house and all that without any money. I had to part with my diamonds—those last ones, don’t you remember, Kate? which he gave me to make me forget Charlie. Oh, how silly girls are! I shouldn’t be so ready, I can tell you, to run away another time. I should keep my diamonds. And I have not had a decent dress since I went to India—not one. The other ladies got boxes from home, but I never sent to Louise except once, and then she did so bother me about a bill to be paid, as if it were likely I could pay bills when we had no money for ourselves! Tradespeople are so unreasonable about their bills, and so are servants, for that matter, going on about wages. Why, there is Pearson—she waits upon me with a face like a mute at a funeral all because she has not got her last half year’s wages! By the way, I suppose she can have them now? They have got such a pull over us, don’t you know, for they can go away, and when a maid suits you it is such a bore when she wants to go away. I have had such experiences, all through the want of money. And I can’t help feeling, oh how hard of him, when he hadn’t really changed his mind at all, to keep me out of it for those seven years! Seven years is a dreadful piece out of one’s life,” cried Stella, “and to have it made miserable and so different to what one had a right to expect, all for the caprice of an old man! Why did he keep me out of it all these years?” And Stella, now thoroughly excited, sobbed to herself over the privations that were past, from which her father could have saved her at any moment had he pleased.

“You ought to be pleased now at least,” said her husband. “Come, Stella, my little girl, let’s shake hands upon it. We’re awfully lucky, and you shall have a good time now.”

“I think I ought to have a good time, indeed!” cried Stella. “Why, it’s all mine! You never would have had a penny but for me. Who should have the good of it, if not I? And I am sure I deserve it, after all I have had to go through. Pearson, is that you?” she cried. “Bring me my jewel-box. Look here,” she said, taking out a case and disclosing what seemed to Katherine a splendid necklace of diamonds, “that’s what I’ve been driven to wear!” She seized the necklace out of the case and flung it to the other end of the room. The stones swung from her hand, flashing through the air, and fell in a shimmer and sparkle of light upon the carpet. “The odious, false things!” cried Stella. “Paris—out of one of those shops, don’t you know? where everything is marked ‘Imitation.’ Charlie got them for me for about ten pounds. And that is what I had to go to Government House in, and all the balls, and have compliments paid me on my diamonds. ‘Yes, they are supposed to be of very fine water,’ I used to say. I used to laugh at first—it seemed a capital joke; but when you go on wearing odious glass things and have to show them off as diamonds—for seven years!”

Sir Charles paused in his walk, and stooped and picked them up. “Yes,” he said, “I gave ten pounds for them, and we had a lot of fun out of them, and you looked as handsome in them, Stella, as if they had been the best. By Jove! to be imitation, they are deuced good imitation. I don’t think I know the difference, do you?” He placed the glittering thing on Katherine’s knee. He wanted to bring her into the conversation with a clumsy impulse of kindness, but he did not know how to manage it. Then, leaving them there, he continued his walk. He could not keep still in his excitement, and Stella could not keep silence. The mock diamonds made a great show upon Katherine’s black gown.

“Oh, I wish you’d take them away! Give them to somebody—give them to the children to play with. I’d give them to Pearson, but how could she wear a riviÈre? Fancy my wearing those things and having nothing better! You have no feeling, Kate; you don’t sympathise a bit. And to think that everything might have been quite different, and life been quite happy instead of the nightmare it was! Papa has a great, great deal to answer for,” Stella said.

“If that is all you think about it, I may go away,” said Katherine, “for we shall not agree. You ought to speak very differently of your father, who always was so fond of you, and now he’s given you everything. Poor papa! I am glad he does not know.”

“But he must have known very well,” cried Stella, “how he left me after pretending to be so fond of me. Do you think either Charlie or I would have done such a thing if we had not been deceived? And so was Lady Jane—and everybody. There was not one who did not say he was sure to send for us home, and see what has happened instead. Oh, he may have made up for it now. But do you think that was being really fond of me, Kate, to leave me out in India without a penny for seven years?”

Katherine rose, and the glittering stones, which had only yesterday been Lady Somers’ diamonds, and as such guarded with all the care imaginable—poor Pearson having acquired her perennial look of worry as much from that as anything, having had the charge of them—rattled with a sound like glass, and fell on the floor, where they lay disgraced as Katherine went hurriedly away. And there they were found by Pearson after Lady Somers had finished her toilet and gone downstairs to lunch. Pearson gave a kick at them where they lay—the nasty imitation things that had cost her so many a thought—but then picked them up, with a certain pity, yet awe, as if they might change again into something dangerous in her very hands.