'Oh! with whom?' asked Mrs. Leyburn, her look brightening. She liked a love affair as much as ever.
Mrs. Thornburgh furtively looked round to see if the door was shut and all safe--she felt herself a criminal, but the sense of guilt had an exhilarating rather than a depressing effect upon her.
'Have you guessed nothing? have the girls told you anything?'
'No!' said Mrs. Leyburn, her eyes opening wider and wider. She never guessed anything; there was no need, with three daughters to think for her, and give her the benefit of their young brains. 'No,' she said again. 'I can't imagine what you mean.'
Mrs. Thornburgh felt a rush of inward contempt for so much obtuseness.
'Well, then, _he is in love with Catherine!_' she said abruptly, laying her hand on Mrs. Leyburn's knee, and watching the effect.
'With Catherine!' stammered Mrs. Leyburn; '_with Catherine!_'
The idea was amazing to her. She took up her knitting with trembling fingers, and went on with it mechanically a second or two. Then laying it down--'Are you quite sure? has he told you?'
'No, but one has eyes,' said Mrs. Thornburgh hastily. 'William and I have seen it from the very first day. And we are both certain that on Tuesday she made him understand in some way or other that she wouldn't marry him, and that is why he went off to Ullswater, and why he made up his mind to go south before his time is up.'
'Tuesday?' cried Mrs. Leyburn. 'In that walk, do you mean, when Catherine looked so tired afterwards? You think he proposed in that walk?'
She was in a maze of bewilderment and excitement.
'Something like it--but if he did, she said "No"; and what I want to know is _why_ she said "No."'
'Why, of course, because she didn't care for him!' exclaimed Mrs. Leyburn, opening her blue eyes wider and wider. 'Catherine's not like most girls; she would always know what she felt, and would never keep a man in suspense.'
'Well, I don't somehow believe,' said Mrs. Thornburgh boldly, 'that she doesn't care for him. He is just the young man Catherine might care for. You can see that yourself.'
Mrs. Leyburn once more laid down her knitting and stared at her visitor. Mrs. Thornburgh, after all her meditations, had no very precise idea as to _why_ she was at that moment in the Burwood drawing-room bombarding Mrs. Leyburn in this fashion. All she knew was that she had sallied forth determined somehow to upset the situation, just as one gives a shake purposely to a bundle of spillikins on the chance of more favourable openings. Mrs. Leyburn's mind was just now playing the part of spillikins, and the vicar's wife was shaking it vigorously, though with occasional qualms as to the lawfulness of the process.