ties for the
next fortnight she had been revolving in her inventive head, which took
the sisters' breath away. Rose bit her lip to keep in her laughter.
Agnes, with vast self-possession, took Mrs. Thornburgh in hand. She
pointed out firmly that nothing would be so likely to make Catherine
impracticable as fuss. 'In vain is the net spread,' etc. She preached
from the text with a worldly wisdom which quickly crushed Mrs.
Thornburgh.

'Well, _what_ am I to do, my dears?' she said at last, helplessly.
'Look at the weather! We must have some picnics, if it's only to amuse
Robert.'

Mrs. Thornburgh spent her life between a condition of effervescence
and a condition of feeling the world too much for her. Rose and Agnes,
having now reduced her to the latter state, proceeded cautiously to give
her her head again. They promised her two or three expeditions and one
picnic at least; they said they would do their best; they promised they
would report what they saw and be very discreet, both feeling the comedy
of Mrs. Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion; and then they
departed to their early dinner, leaving the vicar's wife decidedly less
self-confident than they found her.

'The first matrimonial excitement of the family,' cried Agnes, as
they walked home. 'So far no one can say the Miss Leyburns have been
besieged!'

'It will be all moonshine,' Rose replied, decisively. 'Mr. Elsmere may
lose his heart; we may aid and abet him; Catherine will live in the
clouds for a few weeks, and come down from them at the end with the air
of an angel, to give him his _coup de grace_. As I said before--poor
fellow!'

Agnes made no answer. She was never so positive as Rose, and on the
whole did not find herself the worse for it in life. Besides, she
understood that there was a soreness at the bottom of Rose's heart that
was always showing itself in unexpected connections.

There was no necessity, indeed, for elaborate schemes for assisting
Providence. Mrs. Thornburgh had her picnics and her expeditions, but
without them Robert Elsmere would have been still man enough to see
Catherine Leyburn every day. He loitered about the roads along which she
must needs pass to do her many offices of charity; he offered the vicar
to take a class in the school, and was naively exultant that the vicar
curiously happened to fix an hour when he must needs see Miss Leyburn
going or coming on the same errand; he dropped into Burwood on any
conceivable pr