Here Mrs. Furze threw herself down in a chair and became hysterical. Poor woman! she really cared for Catharine, loved her in a way, and was horrified for her sake at the supposed engagement, but her desire for her daughter's welfare was bound up with a desire for her own, a strand of one interlaced with a strand of the other, so that they could not be separated. It might be said that the union of the two impulses was even more intimate, that it was like a mixture of two liquids. There was no conflict in her. She was not selfish at one moment, and unselfishly anxious for her child the next; but she was both together at the same instant, the particular course on which she might determine satisfying both instincts. Mr. Furze unfastened his wife's gown and stay-laces, and gave her a stimulant. Presently, after directing him with a gasp to open the window, she recovered herself. "I'll discharge Mr. Tom at once," said her husband, "and tell him the reason." "Now, don't be stupid, Furze; pull down that blind, will you? Fancy leaving it up, and the moon staring straight down upon me half undressed! Don't you admit anything of the kind to Tom. I would not let him believe you could suspect it. Besides, if you were to dismiss him for a such a reason as that, you would make Catharine all the more obstinate, and the whole town would hear of it, and we should perhaps be laughed at, and lots of people would take Tom's part and say we might go farther and fare worse, and were stuck up, and all that, for we must remember that all the Furzes were of humble origin, and Eastthorpe knows it. No, no, we will get rid of Tom, but it shall not be because of Catharine--something better than that--you leave it to me." "Well, how about Catharine?" "We will have her in to-morrow morning, when we are not so flurried. I always like to talk to her just after breakfast if there is anything wrong; but do not you say a word to Tom." Mrs. Furze took another sip of the brandy-and-water and went to bed. Mr. Furze shut the window, mixed a little more brandy-and-water, and, as he drank it, reflected deeply. Most vividly did that morning come back to him when he had once before decided to eject Mr. Catchpole. "I do not know how it is with other people," he groaned, "but whenever I have settled on a thing something is sure to turn up against it, and I never know what to be at for the best. My head, too, is not quite what it used to be. Half a dozen worries at once do muddle me. If they would but come, one up and one down, nobody could beat me." He took another sip of the brandy-and-water. "Want of practice--that's all. I have been an idiot to let him do so much. He shall go"; and Mr. Furze put out the candles.