is hand
in fresh combinations and under all points of view. Catherine, in the
heat of her own self-surrender, had perhaps forgotten that her mother
too had a heart!

'Yes, it all sounds very well,' said Mrs. Leyburn at last, sighing,
'but, you know, Catherine isn't easy to manage.'

'Could you talk to her--find out a little?'

'Well, not to-day; I shall hardly see her. Doesn't it seem to you that
when a girl takes up notions like Catherine's, she hasn't time for
thinking about the young men? Why, she's as full of business all day
long as an egg's full of meat. Well, it was my poor Richard's doing--it
was his doing, bless him! I am not going to say anything against it. But
it _was_ different--once.'

'Yes, I know,' said Mrs. Thornburgh thoughtfully. 'One had plenty of
time, when you and I were young, to sit at home and think what one was
going to wear, and how one would look, and whether _he_ had been paying
attention to any one else; and if he had, why; and all that. And now the
young women are so superior. But the marrying has got to be done somehow
all the same. What is she doing to-day?'

'Oh, she'll be busy all to-day and to-morrow; I hardly expect to see her
till Saturday.'

Mrs. Thornburgh gave a start of dismay.

'Why, what _is_ the matter now?' she cried in her most aggrieved tones.
'My dear Mrs. Leyburn, one would think we had the cholera in the parish.
Catherine just spoils the people.'

'Don't you remember,' said Mrs. Leyburn, staring in her turn, and
drawing herself up a little, 'that to-morrow is Midsummer Day, and that
Mary Backhouse is as bad as she can be?'

'Mary Backhouse! Why, I had forgotten all about her!' cried the vicar's
wife, with sudden remorse. And she sat pensively eyeing the carpet
awhile.

Then she got what particulars she could out of Mrs. Leyburn. Catherine,
it appeared, was at this moment at High Ghyll, was not to return till
late, and would be with the dying girl through the greater part of the
following day, returning for an hour or two's rest in the afternoon, and
staying in the evening till the twilight, in which the ghost always made
her appearances, should have passed into night.

Mrs. Thornburgh listened to it all, her contriving mind working the
while at railway speed on the facts presented to her.

'How do you get her home to-morrow night?' she asked, with sudden
animation.

'Oh, we send our man Richard at ten. He takes a lantern if it's dark.'

Mrs. Thornburg