Alas, these are the unguarded hours which sorrow surprises! But no thought of trouble, and no fear of it, had Katherine, as she stood before her mirror one afternoon. She was watching Lettice arrange the double folds of her gray taffeta gown, so as to display a trifle the high scarlet heels of her morocco slippers, with their scarlet rosettes and small diamond buckles.
"Too cold a colour is gray for me, Lettice: give me those scarlet ribbons for a breast knot;" and as Lettice stood with her head a little on one side, watching her mistress arrange the bright bows at her stomacher, there came a knock at the chamber door.
"Here be a strange gentleman, madam, to see you; from London, he do say."
A startled look came into Katherine's face; she dropped the ribbon from her hand, and turned to the servant, who stood twisting a corner of her apron at the front-door.
"Well, then, Jane, like what is the stranger?"
She asked no further question, but went downstairs; and, as the tapping of her heels was heard upon them, Jane lifted her apron to her eyes and whimpered, "I think there be trouble; I do that, Letty."
[Illustration: Jane lifted her apron to her eyes]
"It be like it. And the man rides a gray horse too. Drat the man, to come with news on a gray horse! It be that unlucky, as no one in their seven senses would do it."
"For sure it be! When I was a young wench at school"--and then, as she folded up the loose ribbons, Letty told a gruesome story of a farmer robbed and murdered; but as she came to the part the gray horse played in the tale, Katherine slowly walked into the room, with a letter in her hand. She was white, even to her lips; and with a mournful shake of her head, she motioned to the girls to leave her alone. She put the paper out of her hand, and stood regarding it. Fully ten minutes elapsed ere she gathered strength sufficient to break its well-known seal, and take in the full meaning of words so full of agony to her.
"It is midnight, beloved Katherine, and in six hours I may be dead. Lord Paget spoke of my cousin to me in such terms as leaves but one way out of the affront. I pray you, if you can, to pardon me. The world will condemn me, my own actions will condemn me; and yet I vow that you, and you only, have ever had my love. You I shall adore with my last breath. Kate, my Kate, forgive me. If this comes to you by strange hands, I shall be dead or dying. My will and papers of importance are in the drawer marked "B" in my escritoire. Kiss my son for me, and take my last hope and thought."