r no better than he came here, in
spite of all the beef-tea and jelly Sarah and I have been putting into
him, and never lift a finger; you'd see his life _blasted_ and you'd do
nothing--nothing, I suppose.'

And she fixed him with a fiercely interrogative eye.

'Of course,' cried the vicar, roused; 'I should think so. What good
did an outsider ever get by meddling in a love affair? Take care of
yourself, Emma. If the girl doesn't care for him, you can't make her.'

The vicar's wife rose the upturned corners of her mouth saying
unutterable things.

'Doesn't care for him!' she echoed, in a tone which implied that her
husband's headpiece was past praying for.

'Yes, doesn't care for him!' said the vicar, nettled. 'What else should
make her give him a snub like this?'

Mrs. Thornburgh looked at him again with exasperation. Then a curious
expression stole into her eyes.

'Oh, the Lord only knows!' she said, with a hasty freedom of speech
which left the vicar feeling decidedly uncomfortable, as she shut the
door after her.

However, if the Higher Powers alone knew, Mrs. Thornburgh was convinced
that she could make a very shrewd guess at the causes of Catherine's
behavior. In her opinion it was all pure 'cussedness.' Catherine Leyburn
had always conducted her life on principles entirely different from
those of other people. Mrs. Thornburgh wholly denied, as she sat
bridling by herself, that it was a Christian necessity to make yourself
and other people uncomfortable. 'Yet this was what this perverse young
woman was always doing. Here was a charming young man who had fallen
in love with her at first sight, and had done his best to make the fact
plain to her in the most chivalrous, devoted ways. Catherine encourages
him, walks with him, talks with him, is for a whole three weeks more gay
and cheerful and more like other girls than she has ever been known
to be, and then, at the end of it, just when everybody is breathlessly
awaiting the natural _denouement_, goes off to spend the day that
should have been the day of her betrothal in pottering about orphan
asylums;--leaving everybody, but especially the poor young man, to look
ridiculous! No, Mrs. Thornburgh had no patience with her--none at all.
It was all because she would not be happy like anybody else, but must
needs set herself up to be peculiar. Why not live on a pillar, and go
into hair-shirts at once? Then the rest of the world would know what to
be at.

Meanw