I know the Leyburns enjoyed it. And as for Robert, I saw him
_looking_--_looking_--at that little minx Rose while she was playing
as if he couldn't take his eyes off her. What a picture she made,
to be sure!'

The vicar, who had been standing with his back to fireplace and his
hands in his pockets, received his wife's remarks first of all with
lifted eyebrows, and then with a low chuckle, half scornful, half
compassionate, which made her start in her chair.

'Rose?' he said, impatiently. 'Rose, my dear, where were your eyes?'

It was very rarely indeed, that on her own ground, so to speak, the
vicar ventured to take the whip-hand of her like this. Mrs.
Thornburgh looked at him in amazement.

'Do you mean to say,' he asked, in raised tones, 'that you didn't
notice that from the moment you first introduced Robert to Catherine
Leyburn, he had practically no attention for anybody else?'

Mrs. Thornburgh gazed at him--her memory flew back over the evening-and
her impulsive contradiction died on her lips. It was now her turn
to ejaculate--

'Catherine!' she said feebly. 'Catherine! how absurd!'

But she turned and, with quickened breath, looked out of the window
after the retreating figures. Mrs. Thornburgh went up to bed that
night an inch taller. She had never felt herself more exquisitely
indispensable, more of a personage.