with her
lot. There was a certain flatness, no doubt; a certain dread in
envisaging the years, but experience showed that such moods were not
confined to spinsters alone. They followed as a natural sequence the
awakening from youth's bright dreams; to encourage them would be both
morbid and weak! But with the reading of that amazing letter a new
rebellion surged in her soul...

She was giving up her life for Martin, and Martin was not made happy
thereby. Her mind travelled back to the interview of an hour before--
she saw the tall figure, the weary droop of the shoulders; caught again
a glimpse of the lean dark profile, which, in contradistinction to the
pose, had still so boyish an air. Like a flash of light came a
realisation which galvanised into life the stereotyped pity of years.
He was _young_, poor Martin; still young, at an age when he might most
have enjoyed his life!

For the first time a faint doubt shot through the certainty of Katrine's
conviction that all that was best worth having was for Martin past and
over. A man of thirty-five, in the prime of health and vigour--was it
natural, was it _right_, that his heart should remain buried in the
grave of his girl wife? Loyalty would not allow Katrine to confess as
much in words, but deep down in her heart she realised that her brother
was growing yearly less loving, less lovable, more difficult to please.
Bereft of Juliet, thrown back upon himself, the best part of his nature
was slowly atrophying from disuse.

Was the fault on his side or hers? Woman of twenty-six though she was,
Katrine was curiously limited in her ideas on the great facts of life.
The Cranford cramp had laid its hand upon her, so that her judgments
were made from the standpoint of convention, not fact. It never
occurred to her to blame human nature for the fact that a brother and
sister of mature age had failed to find completeness in a life together;
instead, she peered anxiously into her own shortcomings of temper and
tact, and laboriously built up resolutions.

"I must be more careful, more considerate. He has nobody but me."

She sighed, and this time the sigh was undisguisedly wistful in tone.

"If it were possible! If she could indeed be brave enough, fine enough,
woman enough, to throw conventions to the winds, what a wonderful new
interest might come into her life! The arrival of Dorothea's letters
had made epochs in the week, but how much more--" She stopped short,