After dinner things grew worse. Mrs. Wardlaw had recently presented her husband with a third infant, and the ardent pair had taken advantage of the visit to London of an eminent French Comtist to have it baptized with full Comtist rites. Wardlaw stood astride, on the rug, giving the assembled company a minute account of the ceremony observed, while his wife threw in gentle explanatory interjections. The manner of both showed a certain exasperating confidence, if not in the active sympathy, at least in the impartial curiosity of their audience, and in the importance to modern religious history of the incident itself. Catherine's silence grew deeper and deeper; the conversation fell entirely to Robert. At last Robert, by main force as it were, got Wardlaw off into politics, but the new Irish Coercion Bill was hardly introduced before the irrepressible being turned to Catherine, and said to her with smiling obtuseness,--

'I don't believe I've seen you at one of your husband's Sunday addresses yet, Mrs. Elsmere? And it isn't so far from this part of the world either.'

Catherine slowly raised her beautiful large eyes upon him. Robert looking at her with a qualm, saw an expression he was learning to dread flash across the face.

'I have my Sunday-school at that time, Mr. Wardlaw. I am a Churchwoman.'

The tone had a touch of _hauteur_ Robert had hardly ever heard from his wife before. It effectually stopped all further conversation. Wardlaw fell into silence, reflecting that he had been a fool. His wife, with a timid flush, drew out her knitting and stuck to it for the twenty minutes that remained. Catherine immediately did her best to talk, to be pleasant; but the discomfort of the little party was too great. It broke up at ten, and the Wardlaws departed.

Catherine stood on the rug while Elsmere went with his guests to the door, waiting restlessly for her husband's return. Robert, however, came back to her, tired, wounded, and out of spirits, feeling that the attempt had been wholly unsuccessful, and shrinking from any further talk about it. He at once sat down to some letters for the late post. Catherine lingered a little, watching him longing miserably, like any girl of eighteen, to throw herself on his neck and reproach him for their unhappiness, his friends--she knew not what! He all the time was intimately conscious of her presence, of her pale beauty, which now at twenty-seven, in spite of its severity, had a subtler finish and attraction than ever, of the restless little movements so unlike herself, which she made from time to time. But neither spoke except upon indifferent things. Once more the difficult conditions of their lives seemed too obvious, too oppressive. Both were ultimately conquered by the same sore impulse to let speech alone.

CHAPTER XLII.

And after this little scene, through the busy exciting weeks of the season which followed, Robert taxed to the utmost on all sides, yielded to the impulse of silence more and more.