ternal disturbance is often decisive. The first note of the
thunder was heard, and suddenly the image of Mrs. Cardew presented itself
before Catharine's eyes, appealing to her piteously, tragically. She
faced Mr. Cardew.

"I am sorry Mrs. Cardew is not here. I wish I had seen more of her. Oh,
Mr. Cardew! how I envy her! how I wish I had her brains for scientific
subjects! She is wonderful. But I _must_ be going; the thunder is
distant; you will be in Eastthorpe, I hope, before the storm comes. Good-
bye," and she had gone.

She did not go straight to the house, however, but went into the garden
and again cursed herself that she had dismissed him. Who had dismissed
him? Not she. How had it been done? She could not tell. She crept out
of the garden and went to the corner of the meadow where she could see
the bridge. He was still there. She tried to make up an excuse for
returning; she tried to go back without one, but it was impossible.
Something, whatever it was, stopped her; she struggled and wrestled, but
it was of no avail, and she saw Mr. Cardew slowly retrace his steps to
the town. Then she leaned upon the wall and found some relief in a great
fit of sobbing. Consolation she had none; not even the poor reward of
conscience and duty. She had lost him, and she felt that, if she had
been left to herself, she would have kept him. She went out again late
in the evening. The clouds had passed away to the south and east, but
the lightning still fired the distant horizon far beyond Eastthorpe and
towards Abchurch. The sky was clearing in the west, and suddenly in a
rift Arcturus, about to set, broke through and looked at her, and in a
moment was again eclipsed. What strange confusion! What inexplicable
contrasts! Terror and divinest beauty; the calm of the infinite
interstellar space and her own anguish; each an undoubted fact, but each
to be taken by itself as it stood: the star was there, the dark blue
depth was there, but they were no answer to the storm or her sorrow.

She returned to Eastthorpe on the following day and immediately told her
mother she should not go back to the Misses Ponsonby.

CHAPTER X

The reader has, doubtless, by this time judged with much severity not
only Catharine, but Mr. Cardew. It is admitted to the full that they are
both most unsatisfactory and most improbable. Is it likely that in a
sleepy Midland town, such as Eastthorpe, knowing nothing but the common