verel noticed no change in Caterina, and it was only Mr.
Gilfil who discerned with anxiety the feverish spot that sometimes rose
on her cheek, the deepening violet tint under her eyes, and the strange
absent glance, the unhealthy glitter of the beautiful eyes themselves.
But those agitated nights were producing a more fatal effect than was
represented by these slight outward changes.

Chapter 11

The following Sunday, the morning being rainy, it was determined that the
family should not go to Cumbermoor Church as usual, but that Mr. Gilfil,
who had only an afternoon service at his curacy, should conduct the
morning service in the chapel.

Just before the appointed hour of eleven, Caterina came down into the
drawing-room, looking so unusually ill as to call forth an anxious
inquiry from Lady Cheverel, who, on learning that she had a severe
headache, insisted that she should not attend service, and at once packed
her up comfortably on a sofa near the fire, putting a volume of
Tillotson's Sermons into her hands--as appropriate reading, if Caterina
should feel equal to that means of edification.

Excellent medicine for the mind are the good Archbishop's sermons, but a
medicine, unhappily, not suited to Tina's case. She sat with the book
open on her knees, her dark eyes fixed vacantly on the portrait of that
handsome Lady Cheverel, wife of the notable Sir Anthony. She gazed at the
picture without thinking of it, and the fair blonde dame seemed to look
down on her with that benignant unconcern, that mild wonder, with which
happy self-possessed women are apt to look down on their agitated and
weaker sisters.

Caterina was thinking of the near future--of the wedding that was so soon
to come--of all she would have to live through in the next months.

'I wish I could be very ill, and die before then,' she thought. 'When
people get very ill, they don't mind about things. Poor Patty Richards
looked so happy when she was in a decline. She didn't seem to care any
more about her lover that she was engaged to be married to, and she liked
the smell of the flowers so, that I used to take her. O, if I could but
like anything--if I could but think about anything else! If these
dreadful feelings would go away, I wouldn't mind about not being happy. I
wouldn't want anything--and I could do what would please Sir Christopher
and Lady Cheverel. But when that rage and anger comes into me, I don't
know what to do. I don't feel the g