it myself--oh, I know I should; but I'm a bad mother,
Catherine!' and she caught her daughter's dress and drew her toward her.
_Do_ you care for him?'

Catherine did not answer. She knelt down again, and laid her head on her
mother's hands.

'I want nothing,' she said presently in a low voice of intense
emotion--'I want nothing but you and the girls. You are my life--I ask
for nothing more. I am abundantly--content.'

Mrs. Leyburn gazed down on her with infinite perplexity. The brown hair,
escaped from the cap, had fallen about her still pretty neck, a pink
spot of excitement was on each gently hollowed cheek; she looked almost
younger than her pale daughter.

'But--he is very nice,' she said timidly. 'And he has a good living.
Catherine, you ought to be a clergyman's wife.'

'I ought to be, and I am your daughter,' said Catherine smiling, a
little with an unsteady lip, and kissing her hand.

Mrs. Leyburn sighed and looked straight before her. Perhaps in
imagination she saw the vicar's wife. 'I think--I think,' she said very
seriously, 'I should like it.'

Catherine straightened herself brusquely at that. It was as though she
had felt a blow.

'Mother!' she cried, with a stifled accent of pain, and yet still trying
to smile, 'do you want to send me away?'

'No-no!' cried Mrs. Leyburn hastily. 'But if a nice man wants you to
marry him, Catherine? Your father would have liked him--oh! I know your
father would have liked him. And his manners to me are so pretty, I
shouldn't mind being _his_ mother-in-law. And the girls have no brother,
you know, dear. Your father was always so sorry about that.'

She spoke with pleading agitation, her own tempting imaginations--the
pallor, the latent storm of Catherine's look--exciting her more and
more.

Catherine was silent a moment, then she caught her mother's hand again.

'Dear little mother--dear, kind little mother! You are an angel--you
always are. But I think, if you'll keep me, I'll stay.'

And she once more rested her head clingingly on Mrs. Leyburn's knee.

But _do_ you--'_do_ you love him, Catherine?'

'I love you, mother, and the girls, and my life here.'

'Oh dear,' sighed Mrs. Leyburn, as though addressing a third person,
the tears, in her mild eyes, 'she won't; and she _would_ like it--and so
should I!'

Catherine rose, stung beyond bearing.

'And I count for nothing to you, mother!'--her deep voice quivering;
'you could put me aside--you and the gi