Robert Elsmere | Page 4

and I can't tell you what else besides. But
I held fast, and every now and then I brought her up to the point again,
gently but firmly, and now I think I know all I want to know about the
interesting stranger.'
'My ideas about him are not many,' said Agnes, rubbing her cheek
gently up and down the purring cat, 'and there doesn't seem to be much
order in them. He is very accomplished--a teetotaller--he has been to

the Holy Land, and his hair has been out close after a fever. It sounds
odd, but I am not curious. I can very well wait till to-morrow evening.'
'Oh, well, as to ideas about a person, one doesn't got that sort of thing
from Mrs. Thornburgh. But I know how old he is, where he went to
college, where his mother lives, a certain number of his mother's
peculiarities which seem to be Irish and curious, where his living is,
how much it is worth, likewise the color of his eyes, as near as Mrs.
Thornburgh can get.'
'What a start you have been getting!' said Agnes lazily. 'But what is it
makes the poor old thing so excited?'
Rose sat up and began to fling the fir-cones lying about her at a distant
mark with an energy worthy of her physical perfections and the
aesthetic freedom of her attire.
'Because, my dear, Mrs. Thornburgh at the present moment is always
seeing herself as the conspirator sitting match in hand before a mine.
Mr. Elsmere is the match--we are the mine.'
Agnes looked at her sister, and they both laughed, the bright rippling
laugh of young women perfectly aware of their own value, and in no
hurry to force an estimate of it on the male world.
'Well,' said Rose deliberately, her delicate cheek flushed with her
gymnastics, her eyes sparkling, 'there is no saying. "Propinquity does
it"--as Mrs. Thornburgh is always reminding us. But where can
Catherine be? She went out directly after lunch.'
'She has, gone out to see that youth who hurt his back at the Tysons--at
least I heard her talking to mamma about him, and she went out with a
basket that looked like beef-tea.'
Rose frowned a little.
'And I suppose I ought to have been to the school or to see Mrs. Robson
instead of fiddling all the afternoon. I dare say I ought--only
unfortunately I like my fiddle, and I don't like stuffy cottages, and as
for the goody books, I read them so badly that the old women
themselves come down upon me.'
'I seem to have been making the best of both worlds,' said Agnes
placidly. 'I haven't been doing anything I don't like, but I got hold of
that dress she brought home to make for little Emma Payne and nearly
finished the skirt, so that I feel as good as when one has been twice to
church on a wet Sunday. Ah, there is Catherine, I heard the gate.'

As she spoke steps were heard approaching through the clump of trees
which sheltered the little entrance gate, and as Rose sprang to her feet a
tall figure in white and gray appeared against the background of the
sycamores, and came quickly toward the sisters.
'Dears, I am so sorry; I am afraid you have been waiting for me. But
poor Mrs. Tyson wanted me so badly that I could not leave her. She
had no one else to help her or to be with her till that eldest girl of hers
came home from work.'
'It doesn't matter,' said, Rose, as Catherine put her arm round her
shoulder; 'mamma has been fidgeting, and as for Agnes, she looks as if
she never wanted to move again.'
Catherine's clear eyes, which at the moment seemed to be full of
inward light, kindled in them by some foregoing experience, rested
kindly, but only half consciously, on her younger sister as Agnes softly
nodded and smiled to her. Evidently she was a good deal older than the
other two--she looked about six-and-twenty, a young and vigorous
woman in the prime of health and strength. The lines of the form were
rather thin and spare, but they were softened by the loose bodice and
long full skirt of her dress, and by the folds of a large, white muslin
handkerchief which was crossed over her breast. The face, sheltered by
the plain shady hat was also a little spoilt from the point of view of
beauty by the sharpness of the lines about the chin and mouth, and by a
slight prominence of the cheek-bones, but the eyes, of a dark bluish
gray, were fine, the nose delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful,
while the complexion had caught the freshness and purity