a Churchwoman.'

The tone had a touch of _hauteur_ Robert had hardly ever heard from his
wife before. It effectually stopped all further conversation. Wardlaw
fell into silence, reflecting that he had been a fool. His wife, with
a timid flush, drew out her knitting and stuck to it for the twenty
minutes that remained. Catherine immediately did her best to talk, to be
pleasant; but the discomfort of the little party was too great. It broke
up at ten, and the Wardlaws departed.

Catherine stood on the rug while Elsmere went with his guests to the
door, waiting restlessly for her husband's return. Robert, however,
came back to her, tired, wounded, and out of spirits, feeling that the
attempt had been wholly unsuccessful, and shrinking from any further
talk about it. He at once sat down to some letters for the late post.
Catherine lingered a little, watching him longing miserably, like any
girl of eighteen, to throw herself on his neck and reproach him for
their unhappiness, his friends--she knew not what! He all the time was
intimately conscious of her presence, of her pale beauty, which now
at twenty-seven, in spite of its severity, had a subtler finish and
attraction than ever, of the restless little movements so unlike
herself, which she made from time to time. But neither spoke except upon
indifferent things. Once more the difficult conditions of their lives
seemed too obvious, too oppressive. Both were ultimately conquered by
the same sore impulse to let speech alone.

CHAPTER XLII.

And after this little scene, through the busy exciting weeks of the
season which followed, Robert taxed to the utmost on all sides, yielded
to the impulse of silence more and more.

Society was another difficulty between them. Robert delighted in it so
far as his East End life allowed him to have it. No one was ever more
ready to take other men and women at their own valuation than he.
Nothing was so easy to him as to believe in other people's goodness,
or cleverness, or super-human achievement. On the other hand, London is
kind to such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were becoming
known and relished; and even the most rigid of the old school found it
difficult to be angry with him. His knowledge of the poor and of social
questions attracted the men of action; his growing historical reputation
drew the attention of the men of thought. Most people wished to know him
and to talk to him, and Catherine, smiled upon for