hat.'

'I have no great fear,' she said, looking at him proudly.

'Oh, well--nor I--perhaps,' he admitted, after a moment. 'We can hold
our own. But I wish--oh, I wish'--and he laid his hand on his wife's
shoulder--'I could have made friends with the squire.'

Catherine looked less responsive.

'As squire, Robert, or as Mr. Wendover?'

'As both, of course, but specially as Mr. Wendover.'

'We can do without his friendship,' she said with energy.

Robert gave a great stretch, as though to work off his regrets.

'Ah, but,' he said, half to himself, as his arms dropped, 'if you are
just filled with the hunger to _know_, the people who know as much as
the squire become very interesting to you!'

Catherine did not answer. But probably her heart went out once more in
protest against a knowledge that was to her but a form of revolt against
the awful powers of man's destiny.

'However, here go his books,' said Robert.

* * * * *

Two days later Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes made their appearance, Mrs.
Leyburn all in a flutter concerning the event over which, in her own
opinion, she had come to preside. In her gentle fluid mind all
impressions were short-lived. She had forgotten how she had brought up
her own babies, but Mrs. Thornburgh, who had never had any, had filled
her full of nursery lore. She sat retailing a host of second-hand hints
and instructions to Catherine, who would every now and then lay her hand
smiling on her mother's knee, well pleased to see the flush of pleasure
on the pretty old face, and ready, in her patient filial way, to let
herself be experimented on to the utmost, if it did but make the poor
foolish thing happy.

Then came a night when every soul in the quiet rectory, even hot,
smarting Rose, was possessed by one thought through many terrible hours,
and one only--the thought of Catherine's safety. It was strange and
unexpected, but Catherine, the most normal and healthy of women, had a
hard struggle for her own life and her child's, and it was not till the
gray autumn morning, after a day and night which left a permanent mark
on Robert, that he was summoned at last, and with the sense of one
emerging from black gulfs of terror, received from his wife's languid
hand the tiny fingers of his firstborn.

The days that followed were full of emotion for these two people, who
were perhaps always over-serious, over-sensitive. They had no idea of
minimising the great c