CHAPTER XVII

Murewell Rectory during the next forty-eight hours was the scene of much
that might have been of interest to a psychologist gifted with the power
of divining his neighbours.

In the first place Catherine's terrors were all alive again Robert had
never seen her so moved since those days of storm and stress before
their engagement.

'I cannot bear it!' she said to Robert at night in their room. 'I cannot
bear it! I hear it always in my ears: "What hast thou done with thy
sister?" Oh, Robert, don't mind, dear, though he is your friend. My
father would have shrunk from him with horror--_An alien from the
household of faith! An enemy to the Cross of Christ!_'

She flung out the words with low intense emphasis and frowning brow,
standing rigid by the window, her hands locked behind her. Robert stood
by her much perplexed, feeling himself a good deal of a culprit, but
inwardly conscious that he knew a great deal more about Langham than she
did.

'My dear wifie,' he said to her, 'I am certain Langham has no intention
of marrying.'

'Then more shame for him,' cried Catherine, flushing. 'They could not
have looked more conscious, Robert, when I found them together, if he
had just proposed.'

'What, in five days?' said Robert, more than half inclined to banter his
wife. Then he fell into meditation as Catherine made no answer. 'I
believe with men of that sort,' he said at last, 'relations to women are
never more than half-real--always more or less literature--acting.
Langham is tasting an experience, to be bottled up for future use.'

It need hardly be said, however, that Catherine got small consolation
out of this point of view. It seemed to her Robert did not take the
matter quite rightly.

'After all, darling,' he said at last, kissing her, 'you can act dragon
splendidly; you have already--so can I. And you really cannot make me
believe in anything very tragic in a week.'

But Catherine was conscious that she had already played the dragon hard,
to very little purpose. In the forty hours that intervened between the
scene in the garden and the squire's dinner-party, Robert was always
wanting to carry off Langham, Catherine was always asking Rose's help in
some household business or other. In vain. Langham said to himself
calmly, this time, that Elsmere and his wife were making a foolish
mistake in supposing that his friendship with Miss Leyburn was anything
to be alarmed about, that they would so