ve it such a beggarly few petals? If I'd had a daisy it would
have all come right. Come, Chattie, waltz; and let's forget this wicked
world!'

And, snatching up her violin, the girl broke into a Strauss waltz,
dancing to it the while, her cotton skirts flying, her pretty feet
twinkling, till her eyes glowed, and her cheeks blazed with a double
intoxication--the intoxication of movement, and the intoxication of
sound--the cat meanwhile following her with little mincing perplexed
steps, as though not knowing what to make of her.

'Rose, you madcap!' cried Agnes, opening the door.

'Not at all, my dear,' said Rose calmly, stopping to take breath.
'Excellent practice and uncommonly difficult. Try if you can do it, and
see!'

The weather held up in a gray grudging sort of way, and Mrs. Thornburgh
especially was all for braving the clouds and going on with the
expedition. It was galling to her that she herself would have to be
driven to Shanmoor behind the fat vicarage pony, while the others would
be climbing the fells, and all sorts of exciting things might be
happening. Still it was infinitely better to be half in it than not in
it at all, and she started by the side of the vicarage 'man' in a most
delicious flutter. The skies might fall any day now. Elsmere had not
confided in her, though she was unable to count the openings she had
given him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept his
secret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probably the
neighbourhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest
chatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clue
could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing
that the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis might
be reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager and watchful, and
playing up to his wife in fine style, and if the situation had so
worked on the vicar, Mrs. Thornburgh's state is easier imagined than
described.

The walk to Shanmoor need not be chronicled. The party kept together.
Robert fancied sometimes that there was a certain note of purpose in the
way in which Catherine clung to the vicar. If so it did not disquiet
him. Never had she been kinder, more gentle. Nay, as the walk went on a
lovely gaiety broke through her tranquil manner, as though she, like the
others, had caught exhilaration from the sharpened breeze and the
towering mountains, restored to all their grandeur by