t. I said I loved him--he kissed me--I could
kill myself and him.'

Catherine never forgot the mingled tragedy and domesticity of the hour
that followed--the little familiar morning sounds in and about the
house, maids running up and down stairs, tradesmen calling, bells
ringing--and here, at her feet, a spectacle of moral and mental struggle
which she only half understood, but which wrung her inmost heart. Two
strains of feeling seemed to be present in Rose--a sense of shook, of
wounded pride, of intolerable humiliation--and a strange intervening
passion of pity, not for herself but for Langham, which seemed to have
been stirred in her by his letter. But though the elder questioned, and
the younger seemed to answer, Catherine could hardly piece the story
together, nor could she find the answer to the question filling her own
indignant heart, 'Does she love him?'

At last Rose got up from her crouching position by the fire and stood,
a white ghost of herself, pushing back the bright encroaching hair from
eyes that were dry and feverish.

'If I could only be angry,--downright angry,' she said, more to herself
than Catherine--'it would do one good.'

'Give others leave to be angry for you!' cried Catherine.

'Don't!' said Rose, almost fiercely drawing herself away. 'You don't
know. It is a fate. Why did we ever meet? You may read his letter; you
must--you misjudge him--you always have. No, no'--and she nervously
crushed the letter in her hand--'not yet. But you shall read it some
time--you and Robert too. Married people always tell one another. It
is due to him, perhaps due to me too,' and a hot flush transfigured her
paleness for an instant. 'Oh, my head! Why does one's mind effect one's
body like this? It shall not--it is humiliating! "Miss Leyburn has been
jilted and cannot see visitors,"--that is the kind of thing. Catherine,
when you have finished that document, will you kindly come and hear me
practise my last Raff?--I am going. Good-by.'

She moved to the door, but Catherine had only just time to catch her, or
she would have fallen over a chair from sudden giddiness.

'Miserable!' she said, dashing a tear from her eyes, 'I must go and lie
down then in the proper missish fashion. Mind, on your peril, Catherine,
not a word to anyone but Robert. I shall tell Agnes. And Robert is not
to speak to me! No, don't come--I will go alone.'

And warning her sister back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside her
room, wh