you stand accused with every probability of guilt. But Catherine, like George Eliot's little Hettie, has inherited a cast of countenance with which her nature doesn't tally, for there is in her somewhere a belying "soft spot," a point of timidity and self-distrust which makes her a pawn in the big game, never a mover of pawns. Yet this weakness, while it may account for the subordinate nature of her rôle, undoubtedly contributes to her value in that rôle, for Catherine never obtrudes her own opinion, or has any superfluous accretion of obstinacy to work off on you. On the contrary, her plasticity and deference to others goes farther to keep the domestic wheels running smoothly than many more outstanding virtues might.
Catherine has another good point. She seldom commits herself to words. When she does she never misses fire. Her incisive, and closely pruned vocabulary would be invaluable to a literary craftsman. When I asked her how she liked the new blend of tea (with more than a dash of the doubtful Nippon variety in it) that an over-zealous grocer had insisted on our trying, Catherine's lips came together decisively as she said that it tasted to her "kind
