his sake, and assumed
to be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more bewildered and
antagonistic as the season rushed on.

For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and these evenings,
which supplied Robert with so much intellectual stimulus? With her
all the moral nerves were jarring and out of tune. At any time Richard
Leyburn's daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society where
everything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more or
less bad taste. But now, when there was no refuge to fall back upon in
Robert's arms, no certainty of his sympathy--nay, a certainty, that,
however tender and pitiful he might be, he would still think her wrong
and mistaken! She went here and there obediently because he wished; but
her youth seemed to be ebbing, the old Murewell gayety entirely left
her, and people in general wondered why Elsmere should have married
a wife older than himself, and apparently so unsuited to him in
temperament.

Especially was she tried at Madame de Netteville's. For Robert's sake
she tried for a time to put aside her first impression and to bear
Madame de Netteville's evenings--little dreaming, poor thing, all
the time that Madame de Netteville thought her presence at the famous
'Fridays' an incubus only to be put up with because her husband was
becoming socially an indispensable.

But after two or three Fridays Catherine's endurance failed her. On the
last occasion she found herself late in the evening hemmed in behind
Madame de Netteville and a distinguished African explorer, who was the
lion of the evening. Eugenie de Netteville had forgotten her silent
neighbor, and presently, with some biting little phrase or other, she
asked the great man his opinion on a burning topic of the day, the
results of Church missions in Africa. The great man laughed, shrugged
his shoulders, and ran lightly through a string of stories in which both
missionaries and converts played parts which were either grotesque or
worse. Madame de Netteville thought the stories amusing, and as one
ceased she provoked another, her black eyes full of a dry laughter, her
white hand lazily plying her great ostrich fan.

Suddenly a figure rose behind them.

'Oh, Mrs. Elsmere!' said Madame de Netteville, starting, and then coolly
recovering herself, 'I had no idea you were there all alone. I am afraid
our conversation has been disagreeable to you. I am afraid you are a
friend of missions!'

An