and a Japanese
fan of the same colour, gave just that touch of purpose and art which
the spectator seems to claim as the tribute answering to his praise in
the dress of a young girl. She moved with perfect self-possession,
distributing a few smiling looks to the people she knew as she advanced
towards Lady Charlotte. Any one with a discerning eye could have seen
that she was in that stage of youth when a beautiful woman is like a
statue to which the master is giving the finishing touches. Life, the
sculptor, had been at work upon her, refining here, softening there,
planing away awkwardness, emphasising grace, disengaging as it were,
week by week, and month by month, all the beauty of which the original
conception was capable. And the process is one attended always by a glow
and sparkle, a kind of effluence of youth and pleasure, which makes
beauty more beautiful and grace more graceful.

The little murmur and rustle of persons turning to look, which had
already begun to mark her entrance into a room, surrounded Rose as she
walked up to Lady Charlotte. Mr. Flaxman, who had been standing absently
silent, woke up directly she appeared, and went to greet her before his
aunt.

'You failed us at rehearsal,' he said with smiling reproach; 'we were
all at sixes and sevens.'

'I had a sick mother, unfortunately, who kept me at home. Lady
Charlotte, Catherine couldn't come. Agnes and I are alone in the world.
Will you chaperon us?'

'I don't know whether I will accept the responsibility to-night--in that
new gown,' replied Lady Charlotte grimly, putting up her eyeglass to
look at it and the wearer. Rose bore the scrutiny with a light smiling
silence, even though she knew Mr. Flaxman was looking too.

'On the contrary,' she said, 'one always feels so particularly good and
prim in a new frock.'

'Really? I should have thought it one of Satan's likeliest moments,'
said Flaxman, laughing--his eyes, however, the while saying quite other
things to her, as they finished their inspection of her dress.

Lady Charlotte threw a sharp glance first at him and then at Rose's
smiling ease, before she hurried off to other guests.

'I have made a muddle as usual,' she said to herself in disgust,
'perhaps even a worse one than I thought!'

Whatever might be Hugh Flaxman's state of mind, however, he never showed
greater self-possession than on this particular evening.

A few minutes after Rose's entry he introduced her for the first t