to Robert as a kind of relief. It broke through a tension
of brain which of late had become an oppression. And for both him and
Catherine these dark times had moments of intensest joy, points of white
light illuminating heaven and earth. There were cloudy nights--wet,
stormy January nights--when sometimes it happened to them to come back
both together from the hamlet, Robert carrying a lantern, Catherine
clothed in waterproof from head to foot, walking beside him, the rays
flashing now on her face, now on the wooded sides of the lane, while the
wind howled through the dark vault of branches overhead. And then, as
they talked or were silent, suddenly a sense of the intense blessedness
of this comradeship of theirs would rise like a flood in the man's
heart, and he would fling his free arm round her, forcing her to stand a
moment in the January night and storm while he said to her words of
passionate gratitude, of faith in an immortal union reaching beyond
change or death, lost in a kiss which was a sacrament. Then there were
the moments when they saw their child, held high in Martha's arms at the
window, and leaping towards her mother; the moments when one pallid
sickly being after another was pronounced out of danger; and by the help
of them the weeks passed away.

Nor were they left without help from outside. Lady Helen Varley no
sooner heard the news than she hurried over. Robert, on his way one
morning from one cottage to another, saw her pony-carriage in the lane.
He hastened up to her before she could dismount.

'No, Lady Helen, you mustn't come here,' he said to her peremptorily, as
she held out her hand.

'Oh, Mr. Elsmere, let me. My boy is in town with his grandmother. Let me
just go through, at any rate, and see what I can send you.'

Robert shook his head, smiling. A common friend of theirs and hers had
once described this little lady to Elsmere by a French sentence which
originally applied to the Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Une charmante petite
fee sortie d'un oeuf enchante!'--so it ran. Certainly, as Elsmere
looked down upon her now, fresh from those squalid death-stricken hovels
behind him, he was brought more abruptly than ever upon the contrasts of
life. Lady Helen wore a green velvet and fur mantle, in the production
of which even Worth had felt some pride; a little green velvet bonnet
perched on her fair hair; one tiny hand, ungloved, seemed ablaze with
diamonds; there were opals and diamonds somewhere at