hat there was a soreness at the bottom of Rose's heart that
was always showing itself in unexpected connections.

There was no necessity, indeed, for elaborate schemes for assisting
Providence. Mrs. Thornburgh had her picnics and her expeditions, but
without them Robert Elsmere would have been still man enough to see
Catherine Leyburn every day. He loitered about the roads along which she
must needs pass to do her many offices of charity; he offered the vicar
to take a class in the school, and was naively exultant that the vicar
curiously happened to fix an hour when he must needs see Miss Leyburn
going or coming on the same errand; he dropped into Burwood on any
conceivable pretext, till Rose and Agnes lost all inconvenient respect
for his cloth and Mrs. Leyburn sent him on errands; and he even insisted
that Catherine and the vicar should make use of him and his pastoral
services in one or two of the cases of sickness or poverty under their
care. Catherine, with a little more reserve than usual, took him one day
to the Tysons', and introduced him to the poor crippled son who was
likely to live on paralysed for some time, under the weight, moreover,
of a black cloud of depression which seldom lifted. Mrs. Tyson kept her
talking in the room, and she never forgot the scene. It showed her a new
aspect of a man whose intellectual life was becoming plain to her, while
his moral life was still something of a mystery. The look in Elsmere's
face as he sat bending over the maimed young farmer, the strength and
tenderness of the man, the diffidence of the few religious things he
said, and yet the reality and force of them, struck her powerfully. He
had forgotten her, forgotten everything save the bitter human need, and
the comfort it was his privilege to offer. Catherine stood answering
Mrs. Tyson at random, the tears rising in her eyes. She slipped out
while he was still talking, and went home strangely moved.

As to the festivities, she did her best to join in them. The sensitive
soul often reproached itself afterwards for having juggled in the
matter. Was it not her duty to manage a little society and gaiety for
her sisters sometimes? Her mother could not undertake it, and was always
plaintively protesting that Catherine would not be young. So for a short
week or two Catherine did her best to be young, and climbed the mountain
grass, or forded the mountain streams with the energy and the grace of
perfect health, trembling afte