ion, he had
married a gamekeeper's pretty daughter. She had died with her
child--died, almost, poor thing! of happiness and excitement--of the
over-greatness of Heaven's boon to her. Flaxman had adored her, and
death had tenderly embalmed a sentiment to which life might possibly
have been less kind. Since then he had lived in music, letters, and
society, refusing out of a certain fastidiousness to enter politics, but
welcomed and considered, wherever he went, tall, good-looking,
distinguished, one of the most agreeable and courted of men, and perhaps
the richest _parti_ in London.

Still, in spite of it all, Langham held his ground--Langham would see it
out! And indeed Flaxman's footing with the beauty was by no means
clear--least of all to himself. She evidently liked him, but she
bantered him a good deal; she would not be the least subdued or dazzled
by his birth and wealth, or by those of his friends; and if she allowed
him to provide her with pleasures, she would hardly ever take his
advice, or knowingly consult his tastes.

Meanwhile she tormented them both a good deal by the artistic
acquaintance she gathered about her. Mrs. Pierson's world, as we have
said, contained a good many dubious odds and ends, and she had handed
them all over to Rose. The Leyburns' growing intimacy with Mr. Flaxman
and his circle, and through them with the finer types of the artistic
life, would naturally and by degrees have carried them away somewhat
from this earlier circle if Rose would have allowed it. But she clung
persistently to its most unpromising specimens, partly out of a natural
generosity of feeling, but partly also for the sake of that opposition
her soul loved, her poor prickly soul, full under all her gaiety and
indifference of the most desperate doubt and soreness,--opposition to
Catherine, opposition to Mr. Flaxman, but, above all, opposition to
Langham.

Flaxman could often avenge himself on her--or rather on the more
obnoxious members of her following--by dint of a faculty for light and
stinging repartee which would send her, flushed and biting her lip, to
have her laugh out in private. But Langham for a long time was
defenceless. Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathological
curiosities--their vanity was so frenzied, their sensibilities so
morbidly developed. He felt a doctor's interest in them coupled with
more than a doctor's scepticism as to all they had to say about
themselves. But Rose would inv