monument.

The following morning Elsmere examined the clouds and the barometer with
abnormal interest. The day was sunless and lowering, but not raining,
and he represented to Mrs. Thornburgh, with a hypocritical assumption
of the practical man, that with rugs and mackintoshes it was possible to
picnic on the dampest grass. But he could not make out the vicar's wife.
She was all sighs and flightiness. She 'supposed they could go,' and
'didn't, see what good it would do them;' she had twenty different
views, and all of them more or less mixed up with pettishness, as to the
best place for a picnic on a gray day; and at last she grew so difficult
that Robert suspected something desperately wrong with the household,
and withdrew lest male guests might be in the way. T hen she pursued him
into the study and thrust a _Spectator_ into his hands, begging him to
convey it to Burwood. She asked it lugubriously, with many sighs, her
cap much askew. Robert could, have kissed her, curls and all, one moment
for suggesting the errand, and the next could almost have signed her
committal to the county lunatic asylum with a clear conscience. What an
extraordinary person it was!

Off he went, however, with his _Spectator_ under his arm, whistling.
Mrs. Thornburgh caught the sounds through an open window, and tore the
flannel across she was preparing for a mothers' meeting, with a noise
like the rattle of musketry. Whistling! She would like to know what
grounds he had for it, indeed! She always knew--she always said--and she
would go on saying--that Catherine Leyburn would die an old maid.

Meanwhile Robert had strolled across to Burwood with the lightest heart.
By way of keeping all his anticipations within the bounds of strict
reason, he told himself that it was impossible he should see 'her' in
the morning. She was always busy in the morning.

He approached the house as a Catholic might approach a shrine. That was
her window, that upper casement with the little Banksia rose twining
round it. One night, when he and the vicar had been out late on the
hills, he had seen a light streaming from it across the valley, and
had thought how the mistress of the maiden solitude within shone 'in a
naughty world.'

In the drive he met Mrs. Leyburn, who was strolling about the garden.
She at once informed him, with much languid plaintiveness, that
Catherine had gone to Whinborough for the day, and would not be able to
join the picnic.

Elsmere