rls, and live as though I had
never been!'

'But you would be a great deal to us if you did marry, Catherine!' cried
Mrs. Leyburn, almost with an accent of pettishness. 'People have to do
without their daughters. There's Agnes--I often think, as it is, you
might let her do more. And if Rose were troublesome, why, you know it
might be a good thing--a very good thing if there were a man to take her
in hand!'

'And you, mother, without me?' cried poor Catherine, choked.

'Oh, I should come and see you,' said Mrs. Leyburn, brightening. 'They
say it _is_ such a nice house, Catherine, and such pretty country, and
I'm sure I should like his mother, though she _is_ Irish!'

It was the bitterest moment of Catherine Leyburn's life. In it the
heroic dream of years broke down. Nay, the shrivelling ironic touch
of circumstance laid upon it made it look even in her own eyes almost
ridiculous. What had she been living for, praying for, all these years?
She threw herself down by the widow's side, her face working with a
passion that terrified Mrs. Leyburn.

'Oh, mother, say you would miss me--say you would miss me if I went!'

Then Mrs. Leyburn herself broke down, and the two women clung to each
other, weeping. Catherine's sore heart was soothed a little by her
mother's tears, and by the broken words of endearment that were lavished
on her. But through it all she felt that the excited imaginative desire
in Mrs. Leyburn still persisted. It was the cheapening--the vulgarizing,
so to speak, of her whole existence.

In the course of their long embrace Mrs. Leyburn let fall various items
of news that showed Catherine very plainly who had been at work upon her
mother, and one of which startled her.

'He comes back tonight, my dear--and he goes on Saturday. Oh, and,
Catherine, Mrs. Thornburgh says he does care so much. Poor young man!'

And Mrs. Leyburn looked, up at her now standing daughter with eyes as
woe-begone for Elsmere as for herself.

'Don't talk about it any more, mother,' Catherine implored. 'You
won't sleep, and I shall be more wroth with Mrs. Thornbourgh than I am
already.'

Mrs. Leyburn let herself be gradually soothed and coerced, and
Catherine, with a last kiss to the delicate emaciated fingers on which
the worn wedding ring lay slipping forward--in itself a history--left
her at last to sleep.

'And I don't know much more than when I began!' sighed the perplexed
widow to herself, 'Oh, I wish Richard was here--I