imagined it to be, I shall have my own opinion
about your conduct--but I shall be the first to acquiesce in what you
have done this morning. If, on the other hand, you are simply afraid of
yourself in harness, and afraid of the responsibilities of practical
married life, I cannot help begging you to talk the matter over with me,
and let us face it together. Whether Rose would ever, under any
circumstances, get over the shock of this morning I have not the
remotest idea. But'--and he hesitated--'it seems the feeling you
appealed to yesterday has been of long growth. You know perfectly well
what havoc a thing of this kind _may_ make in a girl's life. I don't say
it will. But, at any rate, it is all so desperately serious I could not
hold my hand. I am doing what is no doubt wholly unconventional; but I
am your friend and her brother; I brought you together, and I ask you to
take me into counsel. If you had but done it before!'

There was a moment's dead silence.

'You cannot pretend to believe,' said Langham at last, with the same
sombre self-containedness, 'that a marriage with me would be for your
sister-in-law's happiness?'

'I don't know what to believe!' cried Robert. 'No,' he added frankly,
'no; when I saw you first attracted by Rose at Murewell I disliked the
idea heartily; I was glad to see you separated; _a priori_, I never
thought you suited to each other. But reasoning that holds good when a
thing is wholly in the air looks very different when a man has committed
himself and another, as you have done.'

Langham surveyed him for a moment, then shook his hair impatiently from
his eyes and rose from his bending position by the fire.

'Elsmere, there is nothing to be said! I have behaved as vilely as you
please. I have forfeited your friendship. But I should be an even
greater fiend and weakling than you think me if, in cold blood, I could
let your sister run the risk of marrying me. I could not trust
myself--you may think of the statement as you like--I should make her
_miserable_. Last night I had not parted from her an hour before I was
utterly and irrevocably sure of it. My habits are my masters. I
believe,' he added slowly, his eyes fixed weirdly on something beyond
Robert, 'I could even grow to _hate_ what came between me and them!'

Was it the last word of the man's life? It struck Robert with a kind of
shiver.

'Pray heaven,' he said with a groan, getting up to go, 'you may not have
made her miserab