Elsmere received a
characteristic letter from him, asking whether their friendship was to
be considered as still existing or at an end. The calm and even proud
melancholy of the letter showed a considerable subsidence of that state
of half-frenzied irritation and discomfort in which Elsmere had last
seen him. The writer, indeed, was clearly settling down into another
period of pessimistic quietism such as that which had followed upon his
first young efforts at self-assertion years before. But this second
period bore the marks of an even profounder depression of all the vital
forces than the first, and as Elsmere, with a deep sigh, half-angry,
half-relenting, put down the letter, he felt the conviction that no
fresh influence from outside would ever again be allowed to penetrate
the solitude of Langham's life. In comparison with the man who had just
addressed him, the tutor of his undergraduate recollections was a
vigorous and sociable human being.

The relenting grew upon him, and he wrote a sensible affectionate letter
in return. Whatever had been his natural feelings of resentment, he
said, he could not realise, now that the crisis was past, that he cared
less about his old friend. 'As far as we two are concerned, let us
forget it all. I could hardly say this, you will easily imagine, if I
thought that you had done serious or irreparable harm. But both my wife
and I agree now in thinking that by a pure accident, as it were, and to
her own surprise, Rose has escaped either. It will be some time, no
doubt, before she will admit it. A girl is not so easily disloyal to her
past. But to us it is tolerably clear. At any rate, I send you our
opinion for what it is worth, believing that it will and must be welcome
to you.'

Rose, however, was not so long in admitting it. One marked result of
that new vulnerableness of soul produced in her by the shock of that
February morning was a great softening towards Catherine. Whatever might
have been Catherine's intense relief when Robert returned from his
abortive mission, she never afterwards let a disparaging word towards
Langham escape her lips to Rose. She was tenderness and sympathy
itself, and Rose, in her curious reaction against her old self, and
against the noisy world of flattery and excitement in which she had been
living, turned to Catherine as she had never done since she was a tiny
child. She would spend hours in a corner of the Bedford Square
drawing-room, pretending