s life had trained her to a new
independence and shrewdness, and in her own opinion she was now a woman
of the world judging all things by pure reason.

Oh, of course, she understood him perfectly. In the first place, at the
time of their first meeting she had been a mere bread-and-butter miss,
the easiest of preys for anyone who might wish to get a few hours
amusement and distraction out of her temper and caprices. In the next
place, even supposing he had been ever inclined to fall in love with
her, which her new sardonic fairness of mind obliged her to regard as
entirely doubtful, he was a man to whom marriage was impossible. How
could anyone expect such a superfine dreamer to turn bread-winner for a
wife and household? Imagine Mr. Langham interviewed by a rate-collector
or troubled about coals! As to her--simply--she had misunderstood the
laws of the game. It was a little bitter to have to confess it; a little
bitter that he should have seen it, and have felt reluctantly compelled
to recall the facts to her. But, after all most girls have some young
follies to blush over.

So far the little cynic would get, becoming rather more scarlet however,
over the process of reflection than was quite compatible with the
ostentatious worldly wisdom of it. Then a sudden inward restlessness
would break through, and she would spend a passionate hour pacing up and
down, and hungering for the moment when she might avenge upon herself
and him the week of silly friendship he had found it necessary as her
elder and monitor to out short!

In September came the news of Robert's resignation of his living. Mother
and daughters sat looking at each other over the letter, stupefied. That
this calamity, of all others, should have fallen on Catherine, of all
women! Rose said very little, and presently jumped up with shining,
excited eyes, and ran out for a walk with Bob, leaving Agnes to console
their tearful and agitated mother. When she came in she went singing
about the house as usual. Agnes, who was moved by the news out of all
her ordinary _sang-froid_, was outraged by what seemed to her Rose's
callousness. She wrote a letter to Catherine, which Catherine put among
her treasures, so strangely unlike it was to the quiet indifferent Agnes
of every day. Rose spent a morning over an attempt at a letter, which
when it reached its destination only wounded Catherine by its constraint
and convention.

And yet that same night when the child was