She dreaded instinctively she knew not what, as the result of her star-gazing and hero-worship. She was conscious she shrank from the common work-a-day world and from the vulgar and mean interests—often, of ordinary people with the common business of life on their hands. But she did not know in the least how to give up her habits, or reconcile herself to society as she found it. She was helpless in the bondage she had made for herself—yet she was frequently more weary and disgusted with herself than she could possibly be with any other person. But Catherine had one great resource against morbidness, though she repaired to it as to other occupations, either listlessly, or with a fitfulness in her temporary eagerness, resorting to it with no distinct comprehension of what a safeguard it was to her, from the consequences of the continual exercise of those faculties which were already over-wrought. Catherine was exceedingly fond of animals, and she happened to be free to express her fondness, since she was not merely the mistress of half-a-dozen pets of her own, she was the sovereign protector of the whole animal kingdom as it existed at the Meadows. She was likewise the head-gardener on the spot. For Mrs. Hilliard had nimbly seized the opportunity of a floricultural tyrant’s throwing up his good situation, in a fit of pique, to get rid of her hired oppressor permanently. She had then vested in Catherine supreme authority over a junior gardener and a boy who were well broken in to obedience. The only obligation which Mrs. Hilliard had imposed on her cousin was that she should not indulge her predilection for Shakespearian flowers in the beds, and untrimmed luxuriance in the shrubbery, to the extent of banishing every choice pelargonium and perfectly quilled dahlia, which had formerly crowned Mrs. Hilliard with honour at flower-shows; neither should Catherine be guilty of corrupting her subordinates to the degree of reducing the grounds to the picturesquely disorderly level of the gardens of a French or Italian country house, so ruining the established reputation of the Meadows for the trimness which is the English gardener’s delight.