s though a soldier after his first skirmish should congratulate
himself on being bulletproof.

To be sure, there was an intense trouble and disquiet in the thought
that she and Mr. Elsmere must meet again, probably many times. The
period of his original invitation had been warmly extended by the
Thornburghs. She believed he meant to stay another week or ten days in
the valley. But in the spiritual exaltation of the night she felt
herself equal to any conflict, any endurance, and she fell asleep, the
hands clasped on her breast expressing a kind of resolute patience, like
those of some old sepulchral monument.

The following morning Elsmere examined the clouds and the barometer with
abnormal interest. The day was sunless and lowering, but not raining,
and he represented to Mrs. Thornburgh, with a hypocritical assumption of
the practical man, that with rugs and mackintoshes it was possible to
picnic on the dampest grass. But he could not make out the vicar's wife.
She was all sighs and flightiness. She 'supposed they could go,' and
'didn't see what good it would do them'; she had twenty different views,
and all of them more or less mixed up with pettishness, as to the best
place for a picnic on a gray day; and at last she grew so difficult that
Robert suspected something desperately wrong with the household, and
withdrew lest male guests might be in the way. Then she pursued him into
the study and thrust a _Spectator_ into his hands, begging him to convey
it to Burwood. She asked it lugubriously with many sighs, her cap much
askew. Robert could have kissed her, curls and all, one moment for
suggesting the errand, and the next could almost have signed her
committal to the county lunatic asylum with a clear conscience. What an
extraordinary person it was!

Off he went, however, with his _Spectator_ under his arm, whistling.
Mrs. Thornburgh caught the sounds through an open window, and tore the
flannel across she was preparing for a mothers' meeting with a noise
like the rattle of musketry. Whistling! She would like to know what
grounds he had for it, indeed! She always knew--she always said, and she
would go on saying--that Catherine Leyburn would die an old maid.

Meanwhile Robert had strolled across to Burwood with the lightest heart.
By way of keeping all his anticipations within the bounds of strict
reason, he told himself that it was impossible he should see 'her' in
the morning. She was always busy in the morning.