e, my dear, where were your eyes?'

It was very rarely indeed, that on her own ground, so to speak, the
vicar ventured to take the whip-hand of her like this. Mrs. Thornburgh
looked at him in amazement.

'Do you mean to say,' he asked, in raised tones, 'that you didn't notice
that from the moment you first introduced Robert to Catherine Leyburn,
he had practically no attention for anybody else?'

Mrs. Thornburgh gazed at him--her memory flew back over the evening-and
her impulsive contradiction died on her lips. It was now her turn to
ejaculate--

'Catherine!' she said feebly. 'Catherine! how absurd!'

But she turned and, with quickened breath, looked out of the window
after the retreating figures. Mrs. Thornburgh went up to bed that
night an inch taller. She had never felt herself more exquisitely
indispensable, more of a personage.

CHAPTER IV.

Before, however, we go on to chronicle the ultimate success or failure
of Mrs. Thornburgh as a match-maker, it may be well to inquire a little
more closely into the antecedents of the man who had suddenly roused so
much activity in her contriving mind. And, indeed, these antecedents
are important to us. For the interest of an uncomplicated story will
entirely depend upon the clearness with which the reader may have
grasped the general outlines of a quick soul's development. And
this development had already made considerable progress before Mrs.
Thornburgh set eyes upon her husband's cousin, Robert Elsmere.

Robert Elsmere, then, was well born and fairly well provided with this
world's goods; up to a certain moderate point, indeed, a favorite of
fortune in all respects. His father belonged to the younger line of an
old Sussex family, and owed his pleasant country living to the family
instincts of his uncle, Sir William Elsmere, in whom Whig doctrines and
Conservative traditions were pretty evenly mixed, with a result of the
usual respectable and inconspicuous kind. His virtues had descended
mostly to his daughters, while all his various weaknesses and fatuities
had blossomed into vices in the person of his eldest son and heir, the
Sir Mowbray Elsmere of Mrs. Seaton's early recollections.

Edward Elsmere, rector of Murewell in Surrey, and father of Robert, had
died before his uncle and patron; and his widow and son had been left to
face the world together. Sir William Elsmere and his nephew's wife had
not much in common, and rarely concerned themselves with each ot