Berlin! She could not stay in the present; or rather the Rose of the
present went straining to the Rose of the future, asking to be righted,
to be avenged.

'I will learn--I will learn fast, many things besides music!' she said
to herself feverishly. 'By April I shall be _much_ cleverer. Oh, _then_
I won't be a fool so easily. We shall be sure to meet, of course. But
he shall find out that it was only a _child_, only a silly, softhearted
baby he played with down here. I shan't care for him in the least, of
course not, not after six months. I don't _mean_ to. And I will make him
know it--oh, I will, though he is so wise, and so much older, and mounts
on such stilts when he pleases!'

So once more Rose flung her defiance at fate. But when Catherine came
along the passage an hour later she heard low sounds from Rose's room,
which ceased abruptly as her step drew near. The elder sister paused;
her eyes filled with tears; her hand closed indignantly. Then she came
closer, all but went in, thought better of it, and moved away. If there
is any truth in brain waves, Langham should have slept restlessly that
night.

Ten days later an escort had been found, all preparations had been made,
and Rose was gone.

Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes lingered a while, and then they too departed
under an engagement to come back after Christmas for a long stay, that
Mrs. Leyburn might cheat the Northern spring a little.

So husband and wife were alone again. How they relished their solitude!
Catherine took up many threads of work which her months of comparative
weakness had forced her to let drop. She taught vigorously in the
school; in the afternoons, so far as her child would let her, she
carried her tender presence and her practical knowledge of nursing to
the sick and feeble; and on two evenings in the week she and Robert
threw open a little room there was on the ground-floor between the study
and the dining-room to the women and girls of the village, as a sort of
drawing-room. Hard-worked mothers would come, who had put their fretful
babes to sleep, and given their lords to eat, and had just energy left,
while the eldest daughter watched, and the men were at the club or the
'Blue Boar,' to put on a clean apron and climb the short hill to the
rectory. Once there, there was nothing to think of for an hour but
the bright room, Catherine's kind face, the Rector's jokes, and the
illustrated papers or the photographs that were spread out for th