But, alas! with the end of November a season of furious rain set in. Then Robert began to watch Mile End with anxiety, for so far every outbreak of illness there had followed upon unusual damp. But the rains passed leaving behind them no worse result than the usual winter crop of lung ailments and rheumatism, and he breathed again. Christmas came and went, and with the end of December the wet weather returned. Day after day rolling masses of southwest cloud came up from the Atlantic and wrapped the whole country in rain, which reminded Catherine of her Westmoreland rain more than any she had yet seen in the South. Robert accused her of liking it for that reason, but she shook her head with a sigh, declaring that it was ‘nothing without the peaks.’ One afternoon she was shutting the door of the school behind her, and stepping out on the road skirting the green--the bedabbled wintry green--when she saw Robert emerging from the Mile End lane. She crossed over to him, wondering, as she neared him, that he seemed to take no notice of her. He was striding along, his wideawake over his eyes, and so absorbed that she had almost touched him before he saw her. ‘Darling, is that you? Don’t stop me, I am going to take the pony-carriage in for Meyrick. I have just come back from that accursed place; three cases of diphtheria in one house, Sharland’s wife--and two others down with fever.’ She made a horrified exclamation. ‘It will spread,’ he said gloomily, ‘I know it will. I never saw the children look such a ghastly crew before. Well, I must go for Meyrick and a nurse, and we must isolate and make a fight for it.’ In a few days the diphtheria epidemic reached terrible proportion’s. There had been one death, others were expected, and soon Robert in his brief hours at home could find no relief in anything, so heavy was the oppression of the day’s memories. At first Catherine for the child’s sake kept away; but the little Mary was weaned, had a good Scotch nurse, was in every way thriving, and after a day or two Catherine’s craving to help, to be with Robert in his trouble was too strong to be withstood. But she dared not go backward and forward between her baby and the diphtheritic children. So she bethought herself of Mrs. Elsmere’s servant, old Martha, who was still inhabiting Mrs. Elsmere’s cottage till a tenant could be found for it, and doing good service meanwhile as an occasional parish nurse. The baby and its nurse went over to the cottage. Catherine carried the child there, wrapped close in maternal arms, and leaving her on old Martha’s lap, went back to Robert.