feeling
divided them from any orthodox Dissenter, but the gulf between them and
the Unitarian had been dug very deep by various forces--forces of
thought originally, of strong habit and prejudice in the course of time.

'He is going to work with them now,' she thought bitterly; 'soon he will
be one of them--perhaps a Unitarian minister himself.'

And for the life of her, as he told his tale, she could find nothing but
embarrassed monosyllables, and still more embarrassed silences,
wherewith to answer him. Till at last he too fell silent, feeling once
more the sting of a now habitual discomfort.

Presently, however, Catherine came to sit down beside him. She laid her
head against his knee, saying nothing, but gathering his hand closely in
both her own.

Poor woman's heart! One moment in rebellion, the next a suppliant. He
bent down quickly and kissed her.

'Would you like,' he said presently, after both had sat silent a while
in the firelight, 'would you care to go to Madame de Netteville's
to-night?'

'By all means,' said Catherine with a sort of eagerness. 'It _was_
Friday she asked us for, wasn't it? We will be quick over dinner, and I
will go and dress.'

In that last ten minutes which Robert had spent with the squire in his
bedroom, on the Monday afternoon, when they were to have walked. Mr.
Wendover had drily recommended Elsmere to cultivate Madame de
Netteville. He sat propped up in his chair, white, gaunt, and cynical,
and this remark of his was almost the only reference he would allow to
the Elsmere move.

'You had better go there,' he said huskily, 'it will do you good. She
gets the first-rate people and she makes them talk, which Lady Charlotte
can't. Too many fools at Lady Charlotte's; she waters the wine too
much.'

And he had persisted with the subject--using it, as Elsmere thought, as
a means of warding off other conversation. He would not ask Elsmere's
plans, and he would not allow a word about himself.

There had been a heart attack, old Meyrick thought, coupled with signs
of nervous strain and excitement. It was the last ailment which
evidently troubled the doctor most. But, behind the physical breakdown,
there was to Robert's sense something else, a spiritual something,
infinitely forlorn and piteous, which revealed itself wholly against the
elder man's' will, and filled the younger with a dumb helpless rush of
sympathy. Since his departure Robert had made the keeping up of his
correspond