There were cloudy nights--wet, stormy January nights--when sometimes it happened to them to come back both together from the hamlet, Robert carrying a lantern, Catherine clothed in waterproof from head to foot, walking beside him, the rays flashing now on her face, now on the wooded sides of the lane, while the wind howled through the dark vault of branches overhead. And then, as they talked or were silent, suddenly a sense of the intense blessedness of this comradeship of theirs would rise like a flood in the man’s heart, and he would fling his free arm round her, forcing her to stand a moment in the January night and storm while he said to her words of passionate gratitude, of faith in an immortal union reaching beyond change or deaths lost in a kiss which was a sacrament. Then there were the moments when they saw their child, held high in Martha’s arms at the window, and leaping toward her mother; the moments when one pallid, sickly being after another was pronounced out of danger; and by the help of them the weeks passed away. Nor were they left without help from outside. Lady Helen Varley no sooner heard the news than she hurried over. Robert on his way one morning from one cottage to another saw her pony-carriage in the lane. He hastened up to her before she could dismount. ‘No, Lady Helen, you mustn’t come here,’ he said to her peremptorily, as she held out her hand. ‘Oh, Mr. Elsmere, let me. My boy is in town with his grandmother. Let me just go through, at any rate, and see what I can send you.’