ite them, would assume a _quasi_-intimacy
with them; and Langham as well as everybody else had to put up with it.

Even the trodden worm, however---- And there came a time when the
concentration of a good many different lines of feeling in Langham's
mind betrayed itself at last in a sharp and sudden openness. It began to
seem to _him_ that she was specially bent often on tormenting him by
these caprices of hers, and he vowed to himself finally, with an
outburst of irritation due in reality to a hundred causes, that he would
assert himself, that he would make an effort at any rate to save her
from her own follies.

One afternoon, at a crowded musical party, to which he had come much
against his will, and only in obedience to a compulsion he dared not
analyse, she asked him in passing if he would kindly find Mr. MacFadden,
a bass singer, whose name stood next on the programme, and who was not
to be seen in the drawing-room.

Langham searched the dining-room and the hall, and at last found Mr.
MacFadden--a fair, flabby, unwholesome youth--in the little study or
cloak-room, in a state of collapse, flanked by whisky and water, and
attended by two frightened maids, who handed over their charge to
Langham and fled.

Then it appeared that the great man had been offended by a change in the
programme, which hurt his vanity, had withdrawn from the drawing-room on
the brink of hysterics, had called for spirits, which had been provided
for him with great difficulty by Mrs. Leyburn's maids, and was there
drinking himself into a state of rage and rampant dignity which would
soon have shown itself in a melodramatic return to the drawing-room, and
a public refusal to sing at all in a house where art had been outraged
in his person.

Some of the old disciplinary instincts of the Oxford tutor awoke in
Langham at the sight of the creature, and, with a prompt sternness which
amazed himself, and nearly set MacFadden whimpering, he got rid of the
man, shut the hall door on him, and went back to the drawing-room.

'Well?' said Rose in anxiety, coming up to him.

'I have sent him away,' he said briefly, an eye of unusual quickness and
brightness looking down upon her; 'he was in no condition to sing. He
chose to be offended, apparently, because he was put out of his turn,
and has been giving the servants trouble.'

Rose flushed deeply, and drew herself up with a look half trouble, half
defiance, at Langham.

'I trust you will not ask