s passionate sigh as the door swung behind them.

'Defeated!' she said to herself with a curious accent. 'Well, everybody
must have his turn. Robert has been too successful in his life, I
think.--You wretch!' she added, after a minute, laying her bright head
down on the book before her.

Next morning his wife found Elsmere after breakfast busily packing a
case of books in the study. They were books from the Hall library, which
so far had been for months the inseparable companion of his historical
work.

Catherine stood and watched him sadly.

'Must You, Robert?'

'I won't be beholden to that man for anything an hour longer than I can
help,' he answered her.

When the packing was nearly finished he came up to where she stood in
the open window.

'Things won't be as easy for us in the future, darling,' he said to
her. 'A rector with both Squire and agent against him is rather heavily
handicapped. We must make up our minds to that.'

'I have no great fear,' she said, looking at him proudly.

'Oh, well--nor I--perhaps,' he admitted, after a moment. We can hold
our own. 'But I wish--oh, I wish'--and he laid his hand on his wife's
shoulder--'I could have made friends with the Squire.'

Catherine looked less responsive.

'As Squire, Robert, or as Mr. Wendover?'

'As both, of course, but specialty as Mr. Wendover.'

'We can do without his friendship,' she said with energy.

Robert gave a great stretch, as though to work off his regrets.

'Ah, but--,'he said, half to himself, as his arms dropped, 'if you are
just filled with the hunger to _know_, the people who know as much as
the Squire become very interesting to you!'

Catherine did not answer. But probably her heart went out once more in
protest against a knowledge that was to her but a form of revolt against
the awful powers of man's destiny.

'However, here go his books,' said Robert.

Two days later Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes made their appearance, Mrs.
Leyburn all in a flutter concerning the event over which, in her
own opinion, she had come to preside. In her gentle fluid mind all
impressions were short-lived. She had forgotten how she had brought up
her own babies, but Mrs. Thornburgh, who had never had any, had filled
her full of nursery lore. She sat retailing a host of second-hand hints
and instructions to Catherine, who would every now and then lay her hand
smiling on her mother's knee, well pleased to see the flush of pleasure
on the pretty old