Catherine's
look would have terrified any of those who loved her. There are some
natures which are never blind, never taken blissfully unawares, and
which taste calamity and grief to the very dregs.

'Robert, to-morrow you will see a doctor?' she implored him when at last
he was safely in bed--white, but smiling.

He nodded.

'Send for Edmondson. What I mind most is this hoarseness,' he said, in a
voice that was little more than a tremulous whisper.

Catherine hardly closed her eyes all night. The room, the house, seemed
to her stifling, oppressive, like a grave. And, by ill luck, with the
morning came a long expected letter, not indeed from the Squire, but
about the Squire. Robert had been for some time expecting a summons to
Murewell. The Squire had written to him last in October from Clarens, on
the Lake of Geneva. Since then weeks had passed without bringing Elsmere
any news of him at all. Meanwhile the growth of the New Brotherhood had
absorbed its founder, so that the inquiries which should have been sent
to Murewell had been postponed. The letter which reached him now was
from old Meyrick. 'The Squire has had another bad attack, and is _much_
weaker. But his mind is clear again, and he greatly desires to see you.
If you can, come to-morrow.'

'_His mind is clear again!_' Horrified by the words and by the images
they called up, remorseful also for his own long silence, Robert sprang
up from bed, where the letter had been brought to him, and presently
appeared down stairs, where Catherine, believing him safely captive for
the morning, was going through some household business.

'I _must_ go, I _must_ go!' he said as he handed her the letter. Meyrick
puts it cautiously, but it may be the end!'

Catherine looked at him in despair.

'Robert, you are like a ghost yourself, and I have sent for Dr.
Edmondson.'

'Put him off till the day after to-morrow. Dear little wife, listen; my
voice is ever so much better. Murewell air will do me good.' She turned
away to hide the tears in her eyes. Then she tried fresh persuasions,
but it was useless--His look was glowing and restless. She saw he felt
it a calling impossible to disobey. A telegram was sent to Edmondson,
and Robert drove off to Waterloo.

Out of the form of London it was a mild, sunny winter's day. Robert
breathed more freely with every mile. His eyes took note of every
landmark in the familiar journey with a thirsty eagerness. It was a
year and a half