But some slight notices of what passed during this interval among our various characters--a faint outline of their doings, and of the positions which they occupied--may not be without some interest. From the period when we last mentioned him, the health of Sir Oliver declined: he grew infirm; and besides gout he had other complaints, which produced a morbid action in his system, and made him alternately gloomy and lethargic, or sensitive and irritable to excess. Any bad news, a disagreeable incident, a chance crossing of his will, made him angry and out of temper with every person and thing around him. All this Katharine bore with a prayerful composure of the spirit, and was often rewarded by subduing her unreasonable father into sincere and affectionate confessions of that divine mercy, which did in so many things comfort and succour them in this season of common adversity and universal suffering. But there were trials to which she was occasionally exposed that drove her away in agony of spirit, and with a silent step, to her closet, where she might weep alone. Sir Oliver had been informed, through the officious and mischievous agency of one of those busy old ladies who had forced their acquaintance on the family, first, that Francis Heywood had been in Oxford with Lord Say’s horsemen, and, next, that he had had an interview on the bank of the river with Mistress Katharine. She contrived, moreover, in her relation of the story, under a pretence of feeling for the young people, and of its being so natural and so romantic, to insinuate that it was a prettily concerted meeting. It is not to be denied that she had some materials on which to build up the fabric of her falsehood: for she had seen Jane and Katharine walking in the meadow; she had seen Francis Heywood leap from the boat; and when he came forth from the avenue which concealed both the ladies as well as himself, and walked swiftly into the city, he had passed close under the window of her summer house.