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.'