d
set her on her guard. Speaking of religion, Robert said, 'Grey is not
one of us;' and Catherine, restrained by a hundred ties of training and
temperament, would not surrender herself, and could not if she would.

Then had followed their home-coming to the rectory, and the first
institution of their common life, never to be forgotten for the
tenderness and the sacredness of it. Mrs. Elsmere had received them,
and had then retired to a little cottage of her own close by. She had of
course already made the acquaintance of her daughter-in-law, for she
had been the Thornburghs' guest for ten days before the marriage in
September, and Catherine, moreover, had paid her a short visit in the
summer. But it was now that for the first she realized to the full the
character of the woman Robert had married. Catherine's manner to her
was sweetness itself. Parted from her own mother as she was, the younger
wowan's strong filial instincts spent themselves in tending the mother
who had been the guardian and life of Robert's youth. And, Mrs. Elsmere
in return was awed by Catherine's moral force and purity of nature,
and proud of her personal beauty, which was so real, in spite of the
severity of the type, and to which marriage had given, at any rate for
the moment, a certain added softness and brilliancy.

But there were difficulties in the way. Catherine was a little too apt
to treat Mrs. Elsmere as she would have treated her own mother. But to
be nursed and protected, to be, screened from draughts, and run after
with shawls and stools was something wholly new and intolerable to Mrs.
Elsmere. She could not away with it, and as soon as she had sufficiently
lost her first awe of her daughter-in-law she would revenge herself in
all sorts of droll ways, and with occasional flashes of petulant Irish
wit which would make Catherine color and drawback. Then Mrs. Elsmere,
touched with remorse, would catch her by the neck and give her a
resounding kiss, which perhaps puzzled Catherine no less than her
sarcasm of a minute before.

Moreover Mrs. Elsmere felt ruefully from the first that her new daughter
was decidedly deficient in the sense of humor.

'I believe it's that father of hers,' she would say to herself crossly.
'By what Robert tells me of him he must have been one of the people who
get ill in their minds for want of a good mouth-filling laugh now and
then. The man who can't amuse himself a bit out of the world is sure to
get his hea