ogue is clear and sharp to her now, as though it were
spoken afresh in her ears. And how has she kept her pledge? She looks
back humbly on her life of incessant devotion, on the tie of long
dependence which has bound to her her weak and widowed mother, on her
relations to her sisters, the efforts she has made to train them in the
spirit of her father's life and beliefs.

Have those efforts reached their term? Can it be said in any sense that
her work is done, her promise kept?

Oh, no--no--she cries to herself, with vehemence. Her mother depends on
her every day and hour for protection, comfort, enjoyment. The girls are
at the opening of life--Agnes twenty, Rose eighteen, with all experience
to come. And Rose--Ah! at the thought of Rose Catherine's heart sinks
deeper and deeper--she feels a culprit before her father's memory. What
is it has gone so desperately wrong with her training of the child?
Surely she has given love enough, anxious thought enough, and here is
Rose only fighting to be free from the yoke of her father's wishes, from
the galling pressure of the family tradition!

No. Her task has just now reached its most difficult, its most critical,
moment. How can she leave it? Impossible.

What claim can she put against these supreme claims of her promise, her
mother's and sisters' need?

_His_ claim? Oh, no--no! She admits with soreness and humiliation
unspeakable that she has done him wrong. If he loves her she has opened
the way thereto; she confesses in her scrupulous honesty that when the
inevitable withdrawal comes she will have given him cause to think of
her hardly, slightingly. She flinches painfully under the thought. But
it does not alter the matter. This girl, brought up in the austerest
school of Christian self-government, knows nothing of the divine rights
of passion. Half modern literature is based upon them, Catherine Leyburn
knew of no supreme right but the right of God to the obedience of man.

Oh, and besides--besides--it is impossible that he should care so very
much. The time is so short--there is so little in her, comparatively,
to attract a man of such resource, such attainments, such access to the
best things of life.

She cannot--in a kind of terror--she _will_ not, believe in her own
love-worthiness, in her own power to deal a lasting wound.

Then her _own_ claim? Has she any claim, has the poor bounding heart
that she cannot silence, do what she will, through all this strenuous