angel, and I am a nasty odious little wretch.
But oh, tell me, what is the matter?'

And she flung her strong young arms round Catherine with a passionate
strength.

The elder sister struggled to release herself.

'Let me go, Rose,' she said, in a low voice. 'Oh, you must let me go!'

And wrenching herself free, she drew her hand over her eyes as though
trying to drive away the mist from them.

'Good-night! Sleep well.'

And she disappeared, shutting the door noiselessly after her. Rose
stood staring a moment, and then swept off her feet by a flood of many
feelings--remorse, love, fear, sympathy--threw herself face downward on
her bed and burst into a passion of tears.

CHAPTER VIII.

Catherine was much perplexed as to how she was to carry out her
resolution; she pondered over it through much of the night. She was
painfully anxious to make Elsmere understand without a scene, without a
definite proposal and a definite rejection. It was no use letting things
drift. Something brusque and marked there must be. She quietly made her
dispositions.

It was long after the gray vaporous morning stole on the hills before
she fell lightly, restlessly asleep. To her healthful youth a sleepless
night was almost unknown. She wondered through the long hours of it,
whether now, like other women, she had had her story, passed through her
one supreme moment, and she thought of one or two worthy old maids she
knew in the neighborhood with a new and curious pity. Had any of them,
too, gone down into Marrisdale and come up widowed indeed?

All through, no doubt, there was a certain melancholy pride in her own
spiritual strength. 'It was not mine,' she would have said with perfect
sincerity, 'but God's.' Still, whatever its source, it had been there at
command, and the reflection carried with it a sad sense of security.
It was as though a soldier after his first skirmish should congratulate
himself on being bullet-proof.

To be sure, there was an intense trouble and disquiet in the thought
that she and Mr. Elsmere must meet again probably many times. The period
of his original invitation had been warmly extended by the Thornburghs.
She believed he meant to stay another week or ten days in the valley.
But in the spiritual exaltation of the night she felt herself equal to
any conflict, any endurance, and she fell asleep, the hands clasped on
her breast expressing a kind of resolute patience, like those of some
old sepulchral