t since! In this intense trance of feeling
it breaks upon her finally that he is right. May it not be that he with
his clearer thought, his wider knowledge of life, has laid his finger on
the weak point in her guardianship of her sisters? 'I have tried to
stifle her passion,' she thought, 'to push it out of the way as a
hindrance. Ought I not rather to have taught her to make of it a step
in the ladder--to have moved her to bring her gifts to the altar? Oh,
let me take his word for it--be ruled by him in this one thing, once!'

She bowed her face on her knees again. It seemed to her that she had
thrown herself at Elsmere's feet, that her cheek was pressed against
that young brown hand of his. How long the moment lasted she never knew.
When at last she rose stiff and weary, darkness was overtaking even the
lingering northern twilight. The angry clouds had dropped lower on the
moors; a few sheep beside the glimmering stone trough showed dimly
white; the night wind was sighing through the untenanted valley and the
scanty branches of the thorn. White mists lay along the hollow of the
dale; they moved weirdly under the breeze. She could have fancied them a
troop of wraiths to whom she had flung her warm crushed heart, and who
were bearing it away to burial.

As she came slowly over the pass and down the Whindale side of the fell
a clear purpose was in her mind. Agnes had talked to her only that
morning of Rose and Rose's desire, and she had received the news with
her habitual silence.

The house was lit up when she returned. Her mother had gone upstairs.
Catherine went to her, but even Mrs. Leyburn discovered that she looked
worn out, and she was sent off to bed. She went along the passage
quickly to Rose's room, listening a moment at the door. Yes, Rose was
inside, crooning some German song, and apparently alone. She knocked and
went in.

Rose was sitting on the edge of her bed, a white dressing-gown over her
shoulders, her hair in a glorious confusion all about her. She was
swaying backwards and forwards dreamily singing, and she started up when
she saw Catherine.

'Roeschen,' said the elder sister, going up to her with a tremor of
heart, and putting her motherly arms round the curly golden hair and the
half-covered shoulders, 'you never told me of that letter from
Manchester, but Agnes did. Did you think, Roeschen, I would never let you
have your way? Oh, I am not so hard! I may have been wrong--I think I
have been