ngering, however. The clouds were deepening, the rain could not
be far off. But if they started soon they could probably reach home
before it came down. Elsmere and Rose hung over the gray stone parapet,
mottled with the green and gold of innumerable mosses, and looked down
through a fringe of English maidenhair growing along the coping, into
the clear eddies of the stream. Suddenly he raised himself on one elbow,
and, shading his eyes, looked to where the vicar and Catherine were
standing in front of the inn, touched for an instant by a beam of fitful
light slipping between two great rain-clouds.

'How well that hat and dress become your sister!' he said, the words
breaking, as it were, from his lips.

'Do you think Catherine pretty?' said Rose with an excellent pretence of
innocence, detaching a little pebble and flinging it harmlessly at a
water-wagtail balancing on a stone below.

He flushed. 'Pretty! You might as well apply the word to your mountains,
to the exquisite river, to that great purple peak!'

'Yes,' thought Rose, 'she is not unlike that high cold peak!' But her
girlish sympathy conquered her; it was very exciting, and she liked
Elsmere. She turned back to him, her face overspread with a quite
irrepressible smile. He reddened still more, then they stared into each
other's eyes, and without a word more understood each other perfectly.

Rose held out her hand to him with a little brusque _bon camarade_
gesture. He pressed it warmly in his.

'That was nice of you!' he cried. 'Very nice of you! Friends then?'

She nodded, and drew her hand away just as Agnes and the vicar disturbed
them.

Meanwhile Catherine was standing by the side of the pony carriage,
watching Mrs. Thornburgh's preparations.

'You're sure you don't mind driving home alone?' she said in a troubled
voice. 'Mayn't I go with you?'

'My dear, certainly not! As if I wasn't accustomed to going about alone
at my time of life! No, no, my dear, you go and have your walk; you'll
get home before the rain. Ready, James.'

The old vicarage factotum could not imagine what made his charge so
anxious to be off. She actually took the whip out of his hand and gave a
flick to the pony, who swerved and started off in a way which would have
made his mistress clamorously nervous under any other circumstances.
Catherine stood looking after her.

'Now, then, right about face and quick march!' exclaimed the vicar.
'We've got to race that cloud over th