uriously convinced that here was one
of the most interesting persons, and one of the persons most interesting
to _him_, that he had ever met. What mingled delicacy and strength in
the hand that had lain beside her on the dinner-table--what potential
depths of feeling in the full dark-fringed eye!

Half an hour later, when Elsmere re-entered the drawing-room, he found
Catherine Leyburn sitting by an open French window that looked out on
the lawn, and on the dim rocky face of the fell. Adeline Baker, a
stooping red-armed maiden, with a pretty face, set off, as she imagined,
by a vast amount of cheap finery, was sitting beside her, studying her
with a timid adoration. The doctor's daughter regarded Catherine
Leyburn, who during the last five years had made herself almost as
distinct a figure in the popular imagination of a few Westmoreland
valleys as Sister Dora among her Walsall miners, as a being of a totally
different order from herself. She was glued to the side of her idol, but
her shy and awkward tongue could find hardly anything to say to her.
Catherine, however, talked away, gently stroking the while the girl's
rough hand which lay on her knee, to the mingled pain and bliss of its
owner, who was outraged by the contrast between her own ungainly member
and Miss Leyburn's delicate fingers.

Mrs. Seaton was on the sofa beside Mrs. Thornburgh, amply avenging
herself on the vicar's wife for any checks she might have received at
tea. Miss Barks, her sister, an old maid with a face that seemed to be
perpetually peering forward, light colourless hair surmounted by a cap
adorned with artificial nasturtiums, and white-lashed eyes armed with
spectacles, was having her way with Mrs. Leyburn, inquiring into the
household arrangements of Burwood with a cross-examining power which
made the mild widow as pulp before her.

When the gentlemen entered, Mrs. Thornburgh looked round hastily. She
herself had opened that door into the garden. A garden on a warm summer
night offers opportunities no schemer should neglect. Agnes and Rose
were chattering and laughing on the gravel path just outside it, their
white girlish figures showing temptingly against the dusky background of
garden and fell. It somewhat disappointed the vicar's wife to see her
tall guest take a chair and draw it beside Catherine--while Adeline
Baker awkwardly got up and disappeared into the garden.

Elsmere felt it an unusually interesting moment, so strong had been