e bottom of the lane. Then he rushed
on, and I have just met her on the stairs. It's as plain as the nose on
your face.'

Agnes sat down bewildered.

'It is hard on him,' she said at last.

'Yes, it is _very_ hard on him!' cried Rose, pacing the room, her long
thin arms clasped behind her, her eyes flashing, 'for she loves him!'

'Rose!'

'She does, my dear, she does,' cried the girl, frowning. 'I know it in a
hundred ways.'

Agnes ruminated.

'And it's all because of us?' she said at last reflectively.

'Of course! I put it to you, Agnes'--and Rose stood still with a tragic
air--'I put it to you, whether it isn't too bad that three unoffending
women should have such a role as this assigned them against their will!'

The eloquence of eighteen was irresistible. Agnes buried her head in the
sofa cushion, and shook with a kind of helpless laughter. Rose meanwhile
stood in the window, her thin form drawn up to its full height, angry
with Agnes, and enraged with all the world.

'It's absurd, it's insulting,' she exclaimed. 'I should imagine that you
and I, Agnes, were old enough and sane enough to look after mamma, put
out the stores, say our prayers, and prevent each other from running
away with adventurers! I won't be always in leading-strings. I won't
acknowledge that Catherine is bound to be an old maid to keep me in
order. I hate it! It is sacrifice run mad.'

And Rose turned to her sister, the defiant head thrown back, a passion
of manifold protest in the girlish looks.

'It is very easy, my dear, to be judge in one's own case,' replied Agnes
calmly, recovering herself. 'Suppose you tell Catherine some of these
home truths?'

Rose collapsed at once. She sat down despondently, and fell, head
drooping, into a moody silence. Agnes watched her with a kind of
triumph. When it came to the point, she knew perfectly well that there
was not a will among them that could measure itself with any chance of
success against that lofty but unwavering will of Catherine's. Rose was
violent, and there was much reason in her violence. But as for her, she
preferred not to dash her head against stone walls.

'Well, then, if you won't say them to Catherine, say them to mamma,' she
suggested presently, but half ironically.

'Mamma is no good,' cried Rose angrily; 'why do you bring her in?
Catherine would talk her round in ten minutes.'

Long after every one else in Burwood, even the chafing, excited Rose,
was asleep, Cath