ing. If it exists it is
your only chance.'

'Yes, she must go to Berlin,' said Catherine slowly.

Then presently she looked up, a flash of exquisite feeling breaking up
the delicate resolution of the face.

'I am not sad about that, Robert. Oh, how you have widened my world for
me!'

Suddenly that hour in Marrisdale came back to her. They were in the
woodpath. She crept inside her husband's arm and put up her face to him,
swept away by an overmastering impulse of self-humiliating love.

The next day Robert walked over to the little market town of Churton,
saw the discreet and long-established solicitor of the place, and got
from him a complete account of the present state of the rural sanitary
law. The first step clearly was to move the sanitary inspector; if that
failed for any reason, then any _bona fide_ inhabitant had an appeal to
the local sanitary authority, viz. the board of guardians. Robert walked
home pondering his information, and totally ignorant that Henslowe, who
was always at Churton on market-days, had been in the market-place at
the moment when the Rector's tall figure had disappeared within Mr.
Dunstan's office-door. That door was unpleasantly known to the agent in
connection with some energetic measures for raising money he had been
lately under the necessity of employing, and it had a way of attracting
his eyes by means of the fascination that often attaches to disagreeable
objects.

In the evening Rose was sitting listlessly in the drawing-room.
Catherine was not there, so her novel was on her lap and her eyes were
staring intently into a world whereof they only had the key. Suddenly
there was a ring at the bell. The servant came, and there were several
voices and a sound of much shoe-scraping. Then the swing-door leading
to the study opened and Elsmere and Catherine came out. Elsmere stopped
with an exclamation.

His visitors were two men from Mile End. One was old Milsom, more sallow
and palsied than ever. As he stood bent almost double, his old knotted
hand resting for support on the table beside him, everything in the
little hall seemed to shake with him. The other was Sharland, the
handsome father of the twins, whose wife had been fed by Catherine with
every imaginable delicacy since Robert's last visit to the hamlet. Even
his strong youth had begun to show signs of premature decay. The rolling
gypsy eyes were growing sunken, the limbs dragged a little.

They had come to implore the R