Their father, with an old man's pride in a handsome only son, had left the bulk of his fortune to Bertie, while Hannah, who had ministered to his comfort and borne his ill-humor, inherited only a paltry couple of hundred a year, with a fairly well furnished house in Wilton Street, Hyde Park. Her brother would have willingly added to this pittance, but she sternly refused to accept what did not of right belong to her. Bertie went with his regiment to India, whence he returned a wiser, a poorer, and a physically weaker man.
His sister, whose business instincts were much too strong to permit her wrapping up such a "talent" as a freehold house in the napkin of unfruitful occupation, looked round to see how she could best turn it to account. Accident threw in her way a girl of large fortune with no relations, whose guardians, thankful to find a respectable home for her, readily agreed to pay Miss Payne handsomely for taking charge of the orphan. Her first _protegee_ married well, under her auspices, and from henceforth her house was rarely empty. Sometimes she accepted a roving commission and travelled with her charge, meanwhile letting her house in town, so making a double profit. It was on one of these expeditions that she was introduced to Mrs. and Miss Liddell. There was an air of sincerity and common-sense about the composed elderly gentlewoman which rather attracted the former, and, when they met again in Paris, Miss Payne came to Katie in her trouble and proved a brave and capable nurse; nor was she unsympathetic, though far from effusive. So, finding that Miss Payne's last young lady had left her, Katherine, with the approval of Mr. Newton, proposed to become her inmate for a year--an arrangement entirely in accordance with Miss Payne's wishes.
"I did not know you were acquainted with Miss Liddell," she said one evening when she was sitting with her brother, Katherine having retired early, as she often did. "It is quite a surprise to me."
"I can hardly say I am acquainted with her; I happened to be of some slight use to her once, and I met her after by accident, when we spoke; that is all."
"I imagine she hardly knew my name." Miss Payne uttered an inarticulate sound between a h'm and a groan, by which she generally expressed indefinite dissent and disapprobation. Then she rose and walked to the dwarf bookcase at the end of the room to fetch her tatting. She was tall and slight. Following her, you might imagine her young, for her figure was good and her step brisk. Meeting her face to face, her pale, slightly puckered cheeks, closely compressed lips, keen light eyes, and crisp pepper-and-salt hair--Cayenne pepper, for it had once been red--suggested at least twenty or twenty-five additional years as compared with the back view.