'Yes mother darling,' she said, half smiling.
'Oh, Catherine! If--if--you like Mr. Elsmere--don't mind--don't think--about us, dear. We can manage--we can manage, dear!'
The change that took place in Catherine Leyburn's face is indescribable. She rose instantly, her arms falling behind her, her beautiful brows drawn together. Mrs. Leyburn, looked up at her with a pathetic mixture of helplessness, alarm, entreaty.
'Mother, who hag been talking to you about Mr. Elsmere and me?' demanded Catherine.
'Oh, never mind, dear, never mind,' said the widow hastily; 'I should have seen it myself--oh, I know I should; but I'm a bad mother, Catherine!' and she caught her daughter's dress and drew her toward her. _Do_ you care for him?'
Catherine did not answer. She knelt down again, and laid her head on her mother's hands.
'I want nothing,' she said presently in a low voice of intense emotion--'I want nothing but you and the girls. You are my life--I ask for nothing more. I am abundantly--content.'
Mrs. Leyburn gazed down on her with infinite perplexity. The brown hair, escaped from the cap, had fallen about her still pretty neck, a pink spot of excitement was on each gently hollowed cheek; she looked almost younger than her pale daughter.
'But--he is very nice,' she said timidly. 'And he has a good living. Catherine, you ought to be a clergyman's wife.'
'I ought to be, and I am your daughter,' said Catherine smiling, a little with an unsteady lip, and kissing her hand.
Mrs. Leyburn sighed and looked straight before her. Perhaps in imagination she saw the vicar's wife. 'I think--I think,' she said very seriously, 'I should like it.'
Catherine straightened herself brusquely at that. It was as though she had felt a blow.
'Mother!' she cried, with a stifled accent of pain, and yet still trying to smile, 'do you want to send me away?'
'No-no!' cried Mrs. Leyburn hastily. 'But if a nice man wants you to marry him, Catherine? Your father would have liked him--oh! I know your father would have liked him. And his manners to me are so pretty, I shouldn't mind being _his_ mother-in-law. And the girls have no brother, you know, dear. Your father was always so sorry about that.'
She spoke with pleading agitation, her own tempting imaginations--the pallor, the latent storm of Catherine's look--exciting her more and more.