scruples, marched through her
doubts, convinced--reasoned her into a blessed submission!

'And I will do it yet!' he cried, leaping to his feet with a sudden
access of hope and energy. And he stood awhile looking out into the
rainy evening, all the keen irregular face and thin pliant form
hardening into the intensity of resolve, which had so often carried the
young tutor through an Oxford difficulty, breaking down antagonism and
compelling consent.

At the high tea which represented the late dinner of the household he
was wary and self-possessed. Mrs. Thornburgh got out of him that he had
been for a walk, and had seen Catherine, but for all her ingenuities of
cross-examination she got nothing more. Afterwards, when he and the
vicar were smoking together, he proposed to Mr. Thornburgh that they two
should go off for a couple of days on a walking tour to Ullswater.

'I want to go away,' he said, with a hand on the vicar's shoulder, '_and
I want to come back_.' The deliberation of the last words was not to be
mistaken. The vicar emitted a contented puff, looked the young man
straight in the eyes, and without another word began to plan a walk to
Patterdale _via_ High Street, Martindale, and Howtown, and back by
Haweswater.

To Mrs. Thornburgh Robert announced that he must leave them on the
following Saturday, June 24.

'You _have_ given me a good time, Cousin Emma,' he said to her, with a
bright friendliness which dumbfoundered her. A good time, indeed! with
everything begun and nothing finished; with two households thrown into
perturbation for a delusion, and a desirable marriage spoilt, all for
want of a little common sense and plain speaking, which _one_ person at
least in the valley could have supplied them with, had she not been
ignored and brow beaten on all sides. She contained herself, however, in
his presence, but the vicar suffered proportionately in the privacy of
the connubial chamber. He had never seen his wife so exasperated. To
think what might have been, what she might have done for the race, but
for the whims of two stuck-up, superior, impracticable young persons,
that would neither manage their own affairs nor allow other people to
manage them for them! The vicar behaved gallantly, kept the secret of
Elsmere's remark to himself like a man, and allowed himself certain
counsels against matrimonial meddling which plunged Mrs. Thornburgh into
well-simulated slumber. However, in the morning he was vaguely