that all the world
should admire us, and she'd scorn to believe that anybody did it from
interested motives.'

Which was perfectly true. Mrs. Leyburn was too devoted to her daughters
to feel any fidgety interest in their marrying. Of course the most
eligible persons would be only too thankful to marry them when the
moment came. Meanwhile her devotion was in no need of the confirming
testimony of lovers. It was sufficient in itself and kept her mind
gently occupied from morning till night. If it had occurred to her to
notice that Robert Elsmere had been paying special attention to anyone
in the family, she would have suggested with perfect naivete that it
was herself. For he had been to her the very pink of courtesy and
consideration, and she was of opinion that 'poor Richard's views' of
the degeneracy of Oxford men would have been modified could he have seen
this particular specimen.

Later on in the morning Rose had been out giving Bob a run, while Agnes
drove with her mother. On the way home she overtook Elsmere returning
from an errand for the vicar.

'It is not so bad,' she said to him, laughing, pointing to the sky; 'we
really might have gone.'

'Oh, it would have been cheerless,' he said, simply. His look of
depression amazed her. She felt a quick movement of sympathy, a wild
wish to bid him cheer up and fight it out. If she could just have shown
him Catherine as she looked last night! Why couldn't she talk it out
with him? Absurd conventions! She had half a mind to try.

But the grave look of the man beside her deterred even her young
half-childish audacity.

'Catherine will have a good day for all her business,' she said,
carelessly.

He assented quietly. Oh, after that hand-shake on the bridge yesterday
she could not stand it--she must give him hint how the land lay.

'I suppose she will spend the afternoon with Aunt Ellen. Elsmere, what
do you think of Aunt Ellen?'

Elsmere started, and could not help smiling into the young girl's
beautiful eyes, which were radiant with fun.

'A most estimable person,' he said. 'Are you on good terms with her,
Miss Rose?'

'Oh dear, no!' she said, with a little face. 'I'm not a Leyburn; I wear
aesthetic dresses, and Aunt Ellen has "special leadings of the spirit"
to the effect that the violin is a soul-destroying instrument. Oh,
dear!'--and the girl's mouth twisted--'it's alarming to think, if
Catherine hadn't been Catherine, how like Aunt Ellen she might, have