CHAPTER II.
KATE DANTON.
Grace went slowly back to the parlour and stood looking thoughtfully into the fire.

It was pleasant in that pleasant parlour, bright with the illumination of lamp and fire--doubly pleasant in contrast with the tumult of wind and rain without.

Very pleasant to Grace, and she sighed wearily as she looked up from the ruby coals to the radiant face smiling down from over the mantel.
"You will be mistress to-morrow," she thought; "the place I have held for the last four years is yours from to-night.

Beautiful as a queen.
What will your reign be like, I wonder ?" She drew up the arm-chair her brother had vacated and sat down, her thoughts drifting backward to the past.

Backward four years, and she saw herself, a penniless orphan, dependent on the bounty of that miserly Uncle Roosevelt in Montreal.