‘Do you know, Mr. Langham,’ said Rose lightly, by his side, ‘that there is no time at all left for _you_ to give _me_ good advice in? That is an obligation still hanging over you. I don’t mean to release you from it, but if I don’t go in now, and finish the covering of those library books, the youth of Murewell will be left without any literature till Heaven knows when!’ He could have blessed her for the tone, for the escape into common mundanity. ‘Hang literature--hang the parish library!’ he said with a laugh as he moved after her. Yet his real inner feeling toward that parish library was one of infinite friendliness. ‘Hear these men of letters!’ she said scornfully. But she was happy; there was a glow on her cheek. A bramble caught her dress; she stopped and laid her white hand to it, but in vain. He knelt in an instant, and between them they wrenched it away, but not till those soft slim fingers had several times felt the neighborhood of his brown ones, and till there had flown through and through him once more, as she stooped over him, the consciousness that she was young, that she was beautiful, that she had pitied him so sweetly, that they were alone. ‘Rose!’ It was Catherine calling--Catherine, who stood at the end of the grass-path, with eyes all indignation and alarm. Langham rose quickly from the ground. He felt as though the gods had saved him--or damned him--which? CHAPTER XVII. Murewell Rectory during the next forty-eight hours was the scene of much that might have been of interest to a psychologist gifted with the power of divining his neighbors. In the first place Catherine’s terrors were all alive again. Robert had never seen her so moved since those days of storm and stress before their engagement. ‘I cannot bear it!’ she said to Robert at night in their room. ‘I cannot bear it! I hear it always in my ears: “What hast thou done with thy sister?” Oh, Robert, don’t mind, dear, though he is your friend. My father would have shrunk from him with horror--_An alien from the household of faith! An enemy to the Cross of Christ!_’ She flung out the words with low intense emphasis and frowning brow, standing rigid by the window, her hands locked behind her. Robert stood by her much perplexed, feeling himself a good deal of a culprit, but inwardly conscious that he knew a great deal more about Langham than she did. ‘My dear wife,’ he said to her, ‘I am certain Langham has no intention of marrying.’ ‘Then more shame for him,’ cried Catherine flushing, ‘They could not have looked more conscious, Robert, when I found them together, if he had just proposed.’ ‘What, in five days?’ said Robert, more than half inclined to banter his wife. Then he fell into meditation as Catherine made no answer. ‘I believe with men of that sort,’ he said at last, ‘relations to women are never more than half-real--always more or less literature--acting. Langham is tasting experience, to be bottled up for future use.’