Doctor Baker looked at the rector's wife, and a kind of flame came
into his eyes. He and Mrs. Seaton were old enemies, and he was a
quick-tempered mercurial sort of Man.

'I presume that one's guardian angel may have to follow one sometimes
into unpleasant quarters,' he said hotly. 'If this girl lives, it
will be Miss Leyburn's doing; if she dies, saved and comforted,
instead of lost in this world and the next, it will be Miss Leyburn's
doing too. Ah, my dear young lady, let me alone! You tie my tongue
always, and I won't have it.'

And the doctor turned his weather-beaten elderly face upon her with
a look which was half defiance and half apology. She, on her side,
had flushed painfully, laying her white fingertips imploringly on
his arm. Mrs. Seaton turned away with a little dry cough, so did
her spectacled sister at the other end of the table. Mrs. Leyburn,
on the other hand, sat in a little ecstasy, looking at Catherine
and Dr. Baker, something glistening in her eyes. Robert Elsmere
alone showed presence of mind. Bending across to Dr. Baker, he
asked him a sudden question as to the history of a certain strange
green mound or barrow that rose out of a flat field not far from
the vicarage windows. Dr. Baker grasped his whiskers, threw the
young man a queer glance, and replied. Thenceforward he and Robert
kept up a lively antiquarian talk on the traces of Norse settlement
in the Cumbrian valleys, which lasted till the ladies left the
dining-room.

As Catherine Leyburn went out Elsmere stood holding the door open.
She could not help raising her eyes upon him, eyes full of a
half-timid half-grateful friendliness. His own returned her look