'That's just it,' said Agnes, intervening; 'we can't know anything in two days. No one ever will know anything about Catherine, if she takes to anybody, till the last minute.'
Mrs. Thornburgh's face fell. 'It's very difficult when people will be so reserved,' she said dolefully.
The girls acquiesced, but intimated that they saw no way out of it.
'At any rate we can bring them together,' she broke out, brightening again. 'We can have picnics, you know, and teas, and all that—and watch. Now listen.'
And the vicar's wife sketched out a programme of festivities for the next fortnight she had been revolving in her inventive head, which took the sisters' breath away. Rose bit her lip to keep in her laughter. Agnes with vast self-possession took Mrs. Thornburgh in hand. She pointed out firmly that nothing would be so likely to make Catherine impracticable as fuss. 'In vain is the net spread,' etc. She preached from the text with a worldly wisdom which quickly crushed Mrs. Thornburgh.
'Well, what am I to do, my dears?' she said at last helplessly. 'Look at the weather! We must have some picnics, if it's only to amuse Robert.'
Mrs. Thornburgh spent her life between a condition of effervescence and a condition of feeling the world too much for her. Rose and Agnes, having now reduced her to the latter state, proceeded cautiously to give her her head again. They promised her two or three expeditions and one picnic at least; they said they would do their best; they promised they would report what they saw and be very discreet, both feeling the comedy of Mrs. Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion; and then they departed to their early dinner, leaving the vicars wife decidedly less self-confident than they found her.
'The first matrimonial excitement of the family,' cried Agnes as they walked home. 'So far no one can say the Miss Leyburns have been besieged!'
'It will be all moonshine,' Rose replied decisively. 'Mr. Elsmere may lose his heart; we may aid and abet him; Catherine will live in the clouds for a few weeks, and come down from them at the end with the air of an angel, to give him his coup de grâce. As I said before—poor fellow!'