e, however, was of the most conventional type. Only his
vanity had a touch of the sublime. Langham, who possessed a sort of
fine-ear gift for catching conversation, heard him saying to an
open-eyed _ingenue_ beside him,--

'Oh, my literary baggage is small as yet. I have only done, perhaps,
three things that will live.'

'Oh, Mr. Wood!' said the maiden, mildly protesting against so much
modesty.

He smiled, thrusting his hand into the breast of the velvet coat. 'But
then,' he said, in a tone of the purest candour, 'at my age I don't
think Shelley had done more!'

Langham, who, like all shy men, was liable to occasional explosions, was
seized with a convulsive fit of coughing, and had to retire from the
neighbourhood of the bard, who looked round him, disturbed and slightly
frowning.

At last he discovered a point of view in the back room whence he could
watch the humours of the crowd without coming too closely in contact
with them. What a miscellaneous collection it was! He began to be
irritably jealous for Rose's place in the world. She ought to be more
adequately surrounded than this. What was Mrs. Leyburn--what were the
Elsmeres about? He rebelled against the thought of her living
perpetually among her inferiors, the centre of a vulgar publicity, queen
of the second-rate.

It provoked him that she should be amusing herself so well. Her
laughter, every now and then, came ringing into the back room. And
presently there was a general hubbub. Langham craned his neck forward,
and saw a struggle going on over a roll of music, between Rose and the
long-haired, long-nosed violoncellist. Evidently she did not want to
play some particular piece, and wished to put it out of sight. Whereupon
the Hungarian, who had been clamouring for it, rushed to its rescue, and
there was a mock fight over it. At last, amid the applause of the room,
Rose was beaten, and her conqueror, flourishing the music on high,
executed a kind of _pas seul_ of triumph.

'_Victoria!_' he cried. 'Now denn for de conditions of peace. Mees Rose,
vill you kindly tune up? You are as moch beaten as the French at Sedan.'

'Not a stone of my fortresses, not an inch of my territory!' said Rose,
with fine emphasis, crossing her white wrists before her.

The Hungarian looked at her, the wild poetic strain in him which was the
strain of race asserting itself.

'But if de victor bows,' he said, dropping on one knee before her. 'If
force lay down his spoils a