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Updated: June 20, 2025
But I think, if you'll keep me, I'll stay. And she once more rested her head clingingly on Mrs. Leyburn's knee. 'But do you do you love him, Catherine? 'I love you, mother, and the girls, and my life here. 'Oh dear, sighed Mrs. Leyburn, as though addressing a third person, the tears in her mild eyes, 'she won't, and she would like it, and so should I! Catherine rose, stung beyond bearing.
'Miss Leyburn, why are you coughing? said Lady Charlotte suddenly. 'There is a great draught, said Rose, shivering a little. 'So there is! cried Lady Charlotte. 'Why, we have got both the windows open. Hugh, draw up Miss Leyburn's. He moved over to her and drew it up. 'I thought you liked a tornado, he said to her, smiling. 'Will you have a shawl there is one behind me.
She never guessed anything; there was no need, with three daughters to think for her, and give her the benefit of their young brains. 'No, she said again. 'I can't imagine what you mean. Mrs. Thornburgh felt a rush of inward contempt for so much obtuseness. 'Well, then, he is in love with Catherine! she said abruptly, laying her hand on Mrs. Leyburn's knee, and watching the effect.
Leyburn's thin mittened hand a while tenderly in her own; Robert and Agnes set up a lively gossip on the subject of the Thornburghs' guests, in which Rose joined, while Catherine looked smiling on. She seemed apart from the rest, Robert thought; not, clearly, by her own will, but by virtue of a difference of temperament which could not but make itself felt.
Everything is plain to him Mrs. Thornburgh's round checks and marvellous curls and jubilant airs, Mrs. Leyburn's mild and tearful pleasure, the Vicar's solid satisfaction. With what confiding joy had those who loved her given her to him! And he knows well that out of all griefs, the grief he has brought upon her in two short years is the one which will seem to her hardest to bear.
At any time Richard Leyburn's daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society where everything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more or less bad taste. But now, when there was no refuge to fall back upon in Robert's arms, no certainty of his sympathy nay, a certainty that, however tender and pitiful he might be, he would still think her wrong and mistaken!
It was the bitterest moment of Catherine Leyburn's life. In it the heroic dream of years broke down. Nay, the shrivelling ironic touch of circumstance laid upon it made it look even in her own eyes almost ridiculous. What had she been living for, praying for, all these years? She threw herself down by the widow's side, her face working with a passion that terrified Mrs. Leyburn.
The young man disentangled all her questions, racked his brains to answer, and showed all through a quick friendliness, a charming deference as of youth to age, which confirmed the liking of the whole party for him. Then the mention of an associate of Richard Leyburn's youth, who had been one of the Tractarian leaders, led him into talk of Oxford changes and the influences of the present.
Thornburgh had said to him as to her musical power, supposed that she felt it an indignity to be asked to play in such company. Mrs. Thornburgh motioned to him to come and sit by Mrs. Leyburn, a summons which he obeyed with the more alacrity, as it brought him once more within reach of Mrs. Leyburn's oldest daughter. 'Are you fond of music, Mr. Elsmere? asked Mrs.
Leyburn's maids, and was there drinking himself into a state of rage and rampant dignity which would soon have shown itself in a melodramatic return to the drawing-room, and a public refusal to sing at all in a house where art had been outraged in his person.
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