-night, but
wait till to-morrow; you know what she is, and you had better think a
bit."

Mrs. Furze, notwithstanding her excitement, dreaded somewhat attacking
Catharine without preparation.

"There's no mistake about it," observed Mr. Furze, rousing himself, "that
I have had my suspicions of Master Tom, but I never thought it would come
to this; nor that Catharine would have anything to say to him. It was
she, though, who said I could not do without him."

"It was she," added Mrs. Furze, "who always stuck out against our coming
up here, and was rude to Mrs. Colston and her son. I do not blame her so
much, though, as I do that wretch of a Catchpole. What he wants is plain
enough: he'll marry her and have the business, the son of a blind beggar
who used to go on errands! Oh me! to think it has come to this, that my
only child should be the wife of a pauper's son, and we've struggled so
hard! What will the Colstons say, and all the church folk, and all the
town, for the matter of that!"

Here Mrs. Furze threw herself down in a chair and became hysterical. Poor
woman! she really cared for Catharine, loved her in a way, and was
horrified for her sake at the supposed engagement, but her desire for her
daughter's welfare was bound up with a desire for her own, a strand of
one interlaced with a strand of the other, so that they could not be
separated. It might be said that the union of the two impulses was even
more intimate, that it was like a mixture of two liquids. There was no
conflict in her. She was not selfish at one moment, and unselfishly
anxious for her child the next; but she was both together at the same
instant, the particular course on which she might determine satisfying
both instincts.

Mr. Furze unfastened his wife's gown and stay-laces, and gave her a
stimulant. Presently, after directing him with a gasp to open the
window, she recovered herself.

"I'll discharge Mr. Tom at once," said her husband, "and tell him the
reason."

"Now, don't be stupid, Furze; pull down that blind, will you? Fancy
leaving it up, and the moon staring straight down upon me half undressed!
Don't you admit anything of the kind to Tom. I would not let him believe
you could suspect it. Besides, if you were to dismiss him for a such a
reason as that, you would make Catharine all the more obstinate, and the
whole town would hear of it, and we should perhaps be laughed at, and
lots of people would take Tom's part and