ce with a long breath, 'that that
creature was never at a public school, and will go to his death without
any one of the kickings due to him!'

Then his very next impulse, perhaps, would be an impulse of gratitude
towards this same 'creature,' towards the man who had released a prize
he had had the tardy sense to see was not meant for him. _Free_
again--to be loved, to be won! There was the fact of facts after all.

His own future policy, however, gave him much anxious thought. Clearly
at present the one thing to be done was to keep his own ambitions
carefully out of sight. He had the skill to see that she was in a state
of reaction, of moral and mental fatigue. What she mutely seemed to ask
of her friends was not to be made to feel.

He took his cue accordingly. He talked to his sister. He kept Lady
Charlotte in order. After all her eager expectation on Hugh's behalf,
Lady Helen had been dumfoundered by the sudden emergence of Langham at
Lady Charlotte's party for their common discomfiture. Who was the
man?--why, what did it all mean? Hugh had the most provoking way of
giving you half his confidence. To tell you he was seriously in love,
and to omit to add the trifling item that the girl in question was
probably on the point of engaging herself to somebody else! Lady Helen
made believe to be angry, and it was not till she had reduced Hugh to a
whimsical penitence and a full confession of all he knew or suspected,
that she consented, with as much loftiness as the physique of an elf
allowed her, to be his good friend again, and to play those cards for
him which at the moment he could not play for himself.

So in the cheeriest daintiest way Rose was made much of by both brother
and sister. Lady Helen chatted of gowns and music and people, whisked
Rose and Agnes off to this party and that, brought fruit and flowers to
Mrs. Leyburn, made pretty deferential love to Catherine, and generally,
to Mrs. Pierson's disgust, became the girls' chief chaperon in a
fast-filling London. Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman was always there to befriend
or amuse his sister's _proteges_--always there, but never in the way. He
was bantering, sympathetic, critical, laudatory, what you will; but all
the time he preserved a delicate distance between himself and Rose, a
bright nonchalance and impersonality of tone towards her which made his
companionship a perpetual tonic. And, between them, he and Helen coerced
Lady Charlotte. A few inconvenient inquirie