conscious
that some time in the visions of the night his spouse had demanded of
him peremptorily, 'When do you get back, William?' To the best of his
memory the vicar had sleepily murmured, 'Thursday'; and had then heard,
echoed through his dreams, a calculating whisper, 'He goes Saturday--one
clear day!'

The following morning was gloomy but fine, and after breakfast the vicar
and Elsmere started off. Robert turned back at the top of the High Fell
pass and stood leaning on his alpenstock, sending a passionate farewell
to the gray distant house, the upper window, the copper beech in the
garden, the bit of winding road, while the vicar discreetly stepped on
northward, his eyes fixed on the wild regions of Martindale.

Mrs. Thornburgh, left alone, absorbed herself to all appearance in the
school treat which was to come off in a fortnight, in a new set of
covers for the drawing-room, and in Sarah's love affairs, which were
always passing through some tragic phase or other, and into which Mrs.
Thornburgh was allowed a more unencumbered view than she was into
Catherine Leyburn's. Rose and Agnes dropped in now and then, and found
her not at all disposed to talk to them on the great event of the
day--Elsmere's absence and approaching departure. They cautiously
communicated to her their own suspicions as to the incident of the
preceding afternoon; and Rose gave vent to one fiery onslaught on the
'moral obstacle' theory, during which Mrs. Thornburgh sat studying her
with small attentive eyes and curls slowly waving from side to side. But
for once in her life the vicar's wife was not communicative in return.
That the situation should have driven even Mrs. Thornburgh to finesse
was a surprising testimony to its gravity. What between her sudden
taciturnity and Catherine's pale silence, the girls' sense of expectancy
was roused to its highest pitch.

'They come back to-morrow night,' said Rose thoughtfully, 'and he goes
Saturday--10:20 from Whinborough--one day for the Fifth Act! By the way,
why did Mrs. Thornburgh ask us to say nothing about Saturday at home?'

She _had_ asked them, however; and with a pleasing sense of conspiracy
they complied.

It was late on Thursday afternoon when Mrs. Thornburgh, finding the
Burwood front door open, made her unchallenged way into the hall, and
after an unanswered knock at the drawing-room door, opened it and peered
in to see who might be there.

'May I come in?'

Mrs. Leyburn, who wa