er sister paused;
her eyes filled with tears; her hand closed indignantly. Then she came
closer, all but went in, thought better of it, and moved away. If there
is any truth in brain-waves, Langham should have slept restlessly that
night.

Ten days later an escort had been found, all preparations had been made,
and Rose was gone.

Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes lingered a while, and then they too departed
under an engagement to come back after Christmas for a long stay, that
Mrs. Leyburn might cheat the northern spring a little.

* * * * *

So husband and wife were alone again. How they relished their solitude!
Catherine took up many threads of work which her months of comparative
weakness had forced her to let drop. She taught vigorously in the
school; in the afternoons, so far as her child would let her, she
carried her tender presence and her practical knowledge of nursing to
the sick and feeble; and on two evenings in the week she and Robert
threw open a little room there was on the ground-floor between the study
and the dining-room to the women and girls of the village, as a sort of
drawing-room. Hard-worked mothers would come, who had put their fretful
babes to sleep, and given their lords to eat, and had just energy left,
while the eldest daughter watched, and the men were at the club or the
'Blue Boar,' to put on a clean apron and climb the short hill to the
rectory. Once there, there was nothing to think of for an hour but the
bright room, Catherine's kind face, the rector's jokes, and the
illustrated papers or the photographs that were spread out for them to
look at if they would. The girls learned to come, because Catherine
could teach them a simple dressmaking, and was clever in catching stray
persons to set them singing; and because Mr. Elsmere read exciting
stories, and because nothing any one of them ever told Mrs. Elsmere was
forgotten by her, or failed to interest her. Any of her social equals of
the neighbourhood would have hardly recognised the reserved and stately
Catherine on these occasions. Here she felt herself at home, at ease.
She would never, indeed, have Robert's pliancy, his quick divination,
and for some time after her transplanting the North-country woman had
found it very difficult to suit herself to a new shade of local
character. But she was learning from Robert every day; she watched him
among the poor, recognising all his gifts with a humble intensity of
ad