without argument the sacredness
of passion and its claim--wherein a vast difference between himself and
that solitary wrestler in Marrisdale.

Meanwhile he kept all his hopes and fears to himself. Mrs. Thornburgh
was dying to talk to him; but though his mobile, boyish temperament made
it impossible for him to disguise his change of mood, there was in him a
certain natural Dignity which life greatly developed, but which made
it always possible for him to hold his own against curiosity and
indiscretion. Mrs. Thornburgh had to hold her peace. As for the vicar,
he developed what were for him a surprising number of new topics of
conversation, and in the late afternoon took Elsmere a run up the
fells to the nearest fragment of the Roman road which runs, with such
magnificent disregard of the humors of Mother Earth, over the very top
of High Street toward Penrith and Carlisle.

Next day it looked as though after many waverings, the characteristic
Westmoreland weather had descended upon them in good earnest. From early
morn till late evening the valley was wrapped in damp clouds or moving
rain, which swept down from the west through the great basin of the
hills, and rolled along the course of the river, wrapping trees and
fells and houses in the same misty, cheerless drizzle. Under the outward
pall of rain, indeed, the valley was renewing its summer youth; the
river was swelling with an impetuous music through all its dwindled
channels; the crags flung out white waterfalls again, which the heat had
almost dried away; and by noon the whole green hollow was vocal with the
sounds of water--water flashing and foaming in the river, water leaping
downward from the rocks, water dripping steadily from the larches and
sycamores and the slate-eaves of the houses.

Elsmere sat indoors reading up the history of the parish system of
Surrey, or pretending to do so. He sat in a corner of the study, where
he and the vicar protected each other against Mrs. Thornburgh. That good
woman would open the door once and again in the morning and put her head
through in search of prey; but on being confronted with two studious
men instead of one, each buried up to the ears in folios, she would give
vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In reality Elsmere
was thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn might
be doing that morning. Judging a North countrywoman by the pusillanimous
Southern standard, he found himself glorying