she said, with a little darkening of her clear look. 'Old
Benham has just been in to say they are expected on Thursday.'

Robert started. 'Are these our last days of peace?' he said
wistfully--'the last days of our honeymoon, Catherine?'

She smiled at him with a little quiver of passionate feeling under the
smile.

'Can anything touch that?' she said under her breath.

'Do you know,' he said presently, his voice dropping, 'that it is only a
month to our wedding day? Oh, my wife, have I kept my promise--is the
new life as rich as the old?'

She made no answer, except the dumb sweet answer that love writes on
eyes and lips. Then a tremor passed over her.

'Are we too happy? Can it be well--be right?'

'Oh, let us take it like children!' he cried, with a shiver, almost
petulantly. 'There will be dark hours enough. It is so good to be
happy.'

She leant her cheek fondly against his shoulder. To her life always
meant self-restraint, self-repression, self-deadening, if need be. The
Puritan distrust of personal joy as something dangerous and ensnaring
was deep ingrained in her. It had no natural hold on him.

They stood a moment hand in hand fronting the cornfield and the
sun-filled west, while the afternoon breeze blew back the man's curly
reddish hair, long since restored to all its natural abundance.

Presently Robert broke into a broad smile.

'What do you suppose Langham has been entertaining Rose with on the way,
Catherine? I wouldn't miss her remarks to-night on the escort we
provided her for a good deal.'

Catherine said nothing, but her delicate eyebrows went up a little.
Robert stooped and lightly kissed her.

'You never performed a greater act of virtue even in _your_ life, Mrs.
Elsmere, than when you wrote Langham that nice letter of invitation.'

And then the young rector sighed, as many a boyish memory came crowding
upon him.

A sound of wheels! Robert's long legs took him to the gate in a
twinkling, and he flung it open just as Rose drove up in fine style, a
thin dark man beside her.

Rose lent her bright cheek to Catherine's kiss, and the two sisters
walked up to the door together, while Robert and Langham loitered after
them talking.

'Oh, Catherine!' said Rose under her breath, as they got into the
drawing-room, with a little theatrical gesture, 'why on earth did you
inflict that man and me on each other for two mortal hours?'

'Sh-sh!' said Catherine's lips, while her face gleamed wit