'I wonder how much chance there is,' she mused, presently. 'Mr. Elsmere will soon be ridiculous. Why, _I_ saw him gather up those violets she threw away yesterday on Moor Crag. And as for her, I don't believe she has realized the situation a bit. At least, if she has she is as unlike other mortals in this as in everything else. But when she does--'
She frowned and meditated, but got no light on the problem. Chattie jumped up on the windowsill, with her usual stealthy _aplomb_, and rubbed herself against the girl's face.
'Oh, Chattie!' cried Rose, throwing her arms round the cat, 'if Catherine 'll _only_ marry Mr. Elsmere, nay dear, and be happy ever afterward, and set me free to live my own life a bit, I'll be _so_ good, you won't know me, Chattie. And you shall have a new collar, my beauty, and cream till you die of it!'
And springing up she dragged in the cat, and snatching a scarlet anemone from a bunch on the table, stood opposite Chattie, who stood slowly waving her magnificent tail from side to side, and glaring as though it were not at all to her taste to be hustled and bustled in this way.
A leaf of the flower dropped on Chattie's nose.
'Won't she? Will she? Won't she? Will--Tiresome flower, why did Nature give it such a beggarly few petals? 'If I'd had a daisy it would have all come right. Come, Chattie, waltz; and let's forgot this wicked world!'
And, snatching up her violin, the girl broke into a Strauss waltz, dancing to it the while, her cotton skirts flying, her pretty feet twinkling, till her eyes glowed, and her cheeks blazed with a double intoxication--the intoxication of movement, and the intoxication of sound--the cat meanwhile following her with little mincing, perplexed steps, as though not knowing what to make of her.
'Rose, you madcap!' cried Agnes, opening the door.
'Not at all, my dear,' said Rose calmly, stopping to take breath. 'Excellent practice and uncommonly difficult. Try if you can do it, and see!'
The weather held up in a gray, grudging, sort of way, and Mrs. Thornburgh especially was all for braving the clouds and going on with the expedition. It was galling to her that she herself would have to be driven to Shanmoor behind the fat vicarage pony, while the others would be climbing the fells, and all sorts of exciting things might be happening. Still it was infinitely better to be half in it than not in it at all, and she started by the side of the vicarage 'man,' in a most delicious flutter. The skies might fall any day now. Elsmere had not confided in her, though she was unable to count the openings she had given him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept his secret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probably the neighborhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest chatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clue could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing that the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis might be reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager and watchful, and playing up to his wife in fine style, and if the situation had so worked on the vicar, Mrs. Thornburgh's state is easier imagined than described.