oed on the prairie, of the bird
exchanging in an instant its glorious freedom of flight for the pitiless
meshes of the net. It was stifling--her whole nature seemed to fight
with it.

Catherine rose and began to put away the books they had been covering.
She had said almost nothing in answer to Rose's tirade. When she was
ready she came and stood beside her sister a moment, her lips trembling.
At last she stooped and kissed the girl--the kiss of deep suppressed
feeling--and went away. Rose made no response.

Unmusical as she was, Catherine pined for her sister's music that
evening. Robert was busy in his study, and the hours seemed
interminable. After a little difficult talk Langham subsided into a book
and a corner. But the only words of which he was conscious for long were
the words of an inner dialogue. 'I promised to play for her.--Go and
offer then!--Madness! let me keep away from her. If she asks me, of
course I will go. She is much too proud, and already she thinks me
guilty of a rudeness.'

Then, with a shrug, he would fall to his book again, abominably
conscious, however, all the while of the white figure between the lamp
and the open window, and of the delicate head and cheek lit up against
the trees and the soft August dark.

When the time came to go to bed he got their candles for the two ladies.
Rose just touched his hand with cool fingers.

'Good-night, Mr. Langham. You are going in to smoke with Robert, I
suppose?'

Her bright eyes seemed to look him through. Their mocking hostility
seemed to say to him as plainly as possible: 'Your purgatory is
over--go, smoke and be happy!'

'I will go and help him wind up his sermon,' he said, with an attempt at
a laugh, and moved away.

Rose went upstairs, and it seemed to her that a Greek brow, and a pair
of wavering melancholy eyes, went before her in the darkness chased
along the passages by the light she held. She gained her room, and stood
by the window, seized again by that stifling sense of catastrophe, so
strange, so undefined. Then she shook it off with an angry laugh, and
went to work to see how far her stock of light dresses had suffered by
her London dissipations.

CHAPTER XVI

The next morning after breakfast the rectory party were in the
garden--the gentlemen smoking, Catherine and her sister strolling
arm-in-arm among the flowers. Catherine's vague terrors of the morning
before had all taken to themselves wings. It seemed to her th