'We are abandoned,' cried Rose, flinging herself into the chair again—then with a little flash of half irresolute wickedness—'and we are free! Oh, I hope she will be happy!'
And she caught Agnes wildly round the neck as though she would drown her first words in her last.
'Madcap!' cried Agnes, struggling. 'Leave me at least a little breath to wish Catherine joy!'
And they both fled upstairs.
There was indeed no prouder woman in the three kingdoms than Mrs. Thornburgh that night. After all the agitation downstairs she could not persuade herself to go to bed. She first knocked up Sarah and communicated the news; then she sat down before a pier-glass in her own room studying the person who had found Catherine Leyburn a husband.
'My doing from beginning to end,' she cried with a triumph beyond words. 'William has had nothing to do with it. Robert has had scarcely as much. And to think how little I dreamt of it when I began! Well, to be sure, no one could have planned marrying those two. There's no one but Providence could have foreseen it—they're so different. And after all it's done. Now then, whom shall I have next year?'