Agnes discreetly made no reply, and Rose was left alone. She sat dreaming a few minutes, the corners of the red mouth drooping. Then she sprang up with a long sigh. ‘A little life!’ she said half-aloud, ‘A little _wickedness!_’ and she shook her curly head defiantly. A few minutes later, in the little drawing-room on the other side of the hall, Catherine and Rose stood together by the open window. For the first time in a lingering spring, the air was soft and balmy; a tender grayness lay over the valley; it was not night, though above the clear outline’s of the fell the stars were just twinkling in the pale blue. Far away under the crag on the further side of High Fell a light was shining. As Catherine’s eyes caught it there was a quick response in the fine Madonna-like face. ‘Any news for me from the Backhouses this afternoon?’ she asked Rose. ‘No, I heard of none. How is she?’ ‘Dying,’ said Catherine simply, and stood a moment looking out. Rose did not interrupt her. She knew that the house from which the light was shining sheltered a tragedy; she guessed with the vagueness of nineteen that it was a tragedy of passion and sin; but Catherine had not been communicative on the subject, and Rose had for some time past set up a dumb resistance to her sister’s most characteristic ways of life and thought, which prevented her now from asking questions. She wished nervously to give Catherine’s extraordinary moral strength no greater advantage over her than she could help. Presently, however, Catherine threw her arm round her with a tender protectingness. ‘What did you do with yourself all the afternoon, Röschen?’ ‘I practised for two hours,’ said the girl shortly, ‘and two hours this morning. My Spohr is nearly perfect.’ ‘And you didn’t look into the school?’ asked Catherine, hesitating; ‘I know Miss Merry expected you.’ ‘No, I didn’t. When one can play the violin and can’t teach, any more than a cuckatoo, what’s the good of wasting one’s time in teaching?’ Catherine did not reply. A minute after Mrs. Leyburn called her, and she went to sit on a stool at her mother’s feet, her hands resting on the elder woman’s lap, the whole attitude of the tall active figure one of beautiful and childlike abandonment. Mrs. Leyburn wanted to confide in her about a new cap, and Catherine took up the subject with a zest which kept her mother happy till bedtime. ‘Why couldn’t she take as much interest in my Spohr? thought Rose.