They reached the little lane leading to the gate of Burwood. She paused at the foot of it.
'You will come in and see my mother, Mr. Elsmere?'
Her look expressed a yearning she could not crush. 'Your pardon, your friendship,' it cried, with the usual futility of all good women under the circumstances. But as he met it for one passionate instant, he recognized fully that there was not a trace of yielding in it. At the bottom of the softness there was the iron of resolution.
'No, no; not now,' he said involuntarily; and she never forgot the painful struggle of the face; 'good-by.' He touched her hand without another word, and was gone.
She toiled up to the gate with difficulty; the gray rain-washed road, the wall, the trees, swimming before her eyes.
In the hall she came across Agnes, who caught hold of her with a start.
'My dear Cathie! you have been walking yourself to death. You look like a ghost. Come and have some tea at once.'
And she dragged her into the drawing-room. Catherine submitted with all her usual outward calm, faintly smiling at her sister's onslaught. But she would not let Agnes put her down on the sofa. She stood with her hand on the back of a chair.
'The weather is very close and exhausting,' she said, gently lifting her hand to her hat. But the hand dropped, and she sank heavily into the chair.
'Cathie, you are faint,' cried Agnes, running to her.
Catherine waved her away, and, with an effort of which none but she would have been capable, mastered the physical weakness.
'I have been a long way, dear,' she said, as though in apology, 'and there is no air. Yes, I will go up-stairs and lie down a minute or two. 'Oh no, don't come, I will be down for tea directly.'
And refusing all help, she guided herself out of the room, her face the color of the foam on the beck outside. Agnes stood dumfounded. Never in her life before had she seen Catherine betray any such signs of physical exhaustion.
Suddenly Rose ran in, shut the door carefully behind her, and rushing up to Agnes put her hands on her shoulders.
'He has proposed to her, and she has said no!'
'He? What, Mr. Elsmere? How on earth can you know?'
'I saw them from up-stairs come to the bottom of the lane. Then he rushed on, and I have just met her on the stairs. It's as plain as the nose on your face.'