Lady Cheverel having sent Caterina out of the drawing-room to fetch some patterns of embroidery from her sitting-room, Captain Wybrow presently walked out after her, and met her as she was returning down stairs.

‘Caterina,’ he said, laying his hand on her arm as she was hurrying on without looking at him, ’will you meet me in the Rookery at twelve o’clock?  I must speak to you, and we shall be in privacy there.  I cannot speak to you in the house.’

To his surprise, there was a flash of pleasure across her face; she answered shortly and decidedly, ‘Yes’, then snatched her arm away from him, and passed down stairs.

Miss Assher was this morning busy winding silks, being bent on emulating Lady Cheverel’s embroidery, and Lady Assher chose the passive amusement of holding the skeins.  Lady Cheverel had now all her working apparatus about her, and Caterina, thinking she was not wanted, went away and sat down to the harpsichord in the sitting-room.  It seemed as if playing massive chords—­bringing out volumes of sound, would be the easiest way of passing the long feverish moments before twelve o’clock.  Handel’s Messiah stood open on the desk, at the chorus ‘All we like sheep’, and Caterina threw herself at once into the impetuous intricacies of that magnificent fugue.  In her happiest moments she could never have played it so well:  for now all the passion that made her misery was hurled by a convulsive effort into her music, just as pain gives new force to the clutch of the sinking wrestler, and as terror gives farsounding intensity to the shriek of the feeble.

But at half-past eleven she was interrupted by Lady Cheverel, who said, ’Tina, go down, will you, and hold Miss Assher’s silks for her.  Lady Assher and I have decided on having our drive before luncheon.’

Caterina went down, wondering how she should escape from the drawing-room in time to be in the Rookery at twelve.  Nothing should prevent her from going; nothing should rob her of this one precious moment—­perhaps the last—­when she could speak out the thoughts that were in her.  After that, she would be passive; she would bear anything.

But she had scarcely sat down with a skein of yellow silk on her hands, when Miss Assher said, graciously,—­’I know you have an engagement with Captain Wybrow this morning.  You must not let me detain you beyond the time.’

‘So he has been talking to her about me,’ thought Caterina.  Her hands began to tremble as she held the skein.

Miss Assher continued in the same gracious tone:  ’It is tedious work holding these skeins.  I am sure I am very much obliged to you.’

‘No, you are not obliged to me,’ said Caterina, completely mastered by her irritation; ‘I have only done it because Lady Cheverel told me.’

The moment was come when Miss Assher could no longer suppress her long latent desire to ‘let Miss Sarti know the impropriety of her conduct.’  With the malicious anger that assumes the tone of compassion, she said, —­’Miss Sarti, I am really sorry for you, that you are not able to control yourself better.  This giving way to unwarrantable feelings is lowering you—­it is indeed.’