Catherine owned the truth in the plainest terms: 

“Yes, I am afraid.”

“And you leave it to me?”

“I leave it to you.”

Mrs. Presty complacently closed her book.  “I was quite prepared to hear it,” she said; “all the unpleasant complications since your Divorce—­and Heaven only knows how many of them have presented themselves—­have been left for me to unravel.  It so happens—­though I was too modest to mention it prematurely—­that I have unraveled this complication.  If one only has eyes to see it, there is a way out of every difficulty that can possibly happen.”  She pushed the book that she had been reading across the table to Catherine.  “Turn to page two hundred and forty,” she said.  “There is the way out.”

The title of the book was “Disasters at Sea”; and the page contained the narrative of a shipwreck.  On evidence apparently irresistible, the drowning of every soul on board the lost vessel had been taken for granted—­when a remnant of the passengers and crew had been discovered on a desert island, and had been safely restored to their friends.  Having read this record of suffering and suspense, Catherine looked at her mother, and waited for an explanation.

“Don’t you see it?” Mrs. Presty asked.

“I can’t say that I do.”

The old lady’s excellent temper was not in the least ruffled, even by this.

“Quite inexcusable on my part,” she acknowledged; “I ought to have remembered that you don’t inherit your mother’s vivid imagination.  Age has left me in full possession of those powers of invention which used to amaze your poor father.  He wondered how it was that I never wrote a novel.  Mr. Presty’s appreciation of my intellect was equally sincere; but he took a different view.  ‘Beware, my dear,’ he said, ’of trifling with the distinction which you now enjoy:  you are one of the most remarkable women in England—­you have never written a novel.’  Pardon me; I am wandering into the region of literary anecdote, when I ought to explain myself.  Now pray attend to this:—­I propose to tell Kitty that I have found a book which is sure to interest her; and I shall direct her attention to the lamentable story which you have just read.  She is quite sharp enough (there are sparks of my intellectual fire in Kitty) to ask if the friends of the poor shipwrecked people were not very much surprised to see them again.  To this I shall answer:  ’Very much, indeed, for their friends thought they were dead.’  Ah, you dear dull child, you see it now!”

Catherine saw it so plainly that she was eager to put the first part of the experiment to an immediate trial.

Kitty was sent for, and made her appearance with a fishing-rod over her shoulder.  “I’m going to the brook,” she announced; “expect some fish for dinner to-day.”