arriage!'

At that moment Rose slipped on a spray of gardenia, which had dropped
from the bouquet of some predecessor. To prevent herself from falling
downstairs, she caught hold of the stem of a brazen chandelier fixed in
the balustrade. It saved her, but she gave her arm a most painful
wrench, and leant limp and white against the railing of the stairs. Lady
Helen turned at Agnes's exclamation, but before she could speak, as it
seemed, Mr. Flaxman, who had been standing talking just below them, was
on the stairs.

'You have hurt your arm? Don't speak--take mine. Let me get you
downstairs out of the crush.'

She was too far gone to resist, and when she was mistress of herself
again she found herself in the library with some water in her hand which
Mr. Flaxman had just put there.

'Is it the playing hand?' said Lady Helen anxiously.

'No,' said Rose, trying to laugh; 'the bowing elbow.' And she raised it,
but with a contortion of pain.

'Don't raise it,' he said peremptorily. 'We will have a doctor here in a
moment, and have it bandaged.'

He disappeared. Rose tried to sit up, seized with a frantic longing to
disobey him, and get off before he returned. Stinging the girl's mind
was the sense that it might all perfectly well seem to him a planned
appeal to his pity.

'Agnes, help me up,' she said with a little involuntary groan; 'I shall
be better at home.'

But both Lady Helen and Agnes laughed her to scorn, and she lay back
once more overwhelmed by fatigue and faintness. A few more minutes, and
a doctor appeared, caught by good luck in the next street. He pronounced
it a severe muscular strain, but nothing more; applied a lotion and
improvised a sling. Rose consulted him anxiously as to the interference
with her playing.

'A week,' he said; 'no more, if you are careful.'

Her pale face brightened. Her art had seemed specially dear to her of
late.

'Hugh!' called Lady Helen, going to the door. '_Now_ we are ready for
the carriage.'

Rose leaning on Agnes walked out into the hall. They found him there
waiting.

'The carriage is here,' he said, bending towards her with a look and
tone which so stirred the fluttered nerves, that the sense of faintness
stole back upon her. 'Let me take you to it.'

'Thank you,' she said coldly, but by a superhuman effort; 'my sister's
help is quite enough.'

He followed them with Lady Helen. At the carriage door the sisters
hesitated a moment. Rose was helpless without