ed, by a vast amount, of cheap finery, was sitting beside her,
studying her with a timid adoration. The doctor's daughter regarded
Catherine Leyburn, who during the last five years had made herself
almost as distinct a figure in the popular imagination of a few
Westmoreland valleys as Sister Dora among her Walsall miners, as a being
of a totally different Order from herself. She was glued to the side of
her idol, but her shy, and awkward tongue could find hardly anything to
say to her. Catherine, however, talked away, gently stroking the while
the girl's rough hand which lay on her knee, to the mingled pain and
bliss of its owner, who was outraged by the contrast between her own
ungainly member and Miss Leyburn's delicate fingers.

Mrs. Seaton was on the sofa beside Mrs. Thornburgh, amply avenging
herself on the vicar's wife for any checks she might have received at
tea. Miss Barks, her sister, an old maid with a face that seemed to be
perpetually peering forward, light colorless hair surmounted by a cap
adorned with artificial nasturtiums, and white-lashed eyes armed with
spectacles, was having her way with Mrs. Leyburn, inquiring into the
household arrangements of Burwood with a cross-examining power which
made the mild widow as pulp before her.

When the gentlemen entered, Mrs. Thornburgh looked round hastily. She
herself had opened that door into the garden. A garden on a warm summer
night offers opportunities no schemer should neglect. Agnes and Rose
were chattering and laughing on the gravel path just outside it, their
white girlish figures showing temptingly against the dusky background
of garden and fell. It somewhat disappointed the vicar's wife to see
her tall guest take a chair and draw it beside Catherine--while Adeline
Baker awkwardly got up and disappeared into the garden.

Elsmere felt it an unusually interesting moment, so strong had been
his sense of attraction at tea; but like the rest of us he could find
nothing more telling to start with than a remark about the weather.
Catherine in her reply asked him if he were quite recovered from the
attack of low fever he was understood to have been suffering from.

'Oh, yes,' he said brightly, 'I am very nearly as fit as I ever was,
and more eager than I ever was, to got to work. The idling of it is
the worst part of illness. However, in a month from now I must be at my
living, and I can only hope it will give me enough to do.'

Catherine looked up at him w