a right hand. A little
imperative movement from behind displaced Agnes, and Rose felt herself
hoisted in by a strong arm. She sank into the farther corner. The glow
of the dawn caught her white delicate features, the curls on her
temples, all the silken confusion of her dress. Hugh Flaxman put in
Agnes and his sister, said something to Agnes about coming to inquire,
and raised his hat. Rose caught the quick force and intensity of his
eyes, and then closed her own, lost in a languid swoon of pain, memory,
and resentful wonder.

Flaxman walked away down Park Lane through the chill morning quietness,
the gathering light striking over the houses beside him on to the misty
stretches of the Park. His hat was over his eyes, his hands thrust into
his pockets; a close observer would have noticed a certain trembling of
the lips. It was but a few seconds since her young warm beauty had been
for an instant in his arms; his whole being was shaken by it, and by
that last look of hers. 'Have I gone too far?' he asked himself
anxiously. 'Is it divinely true--_already_--that she resents being left
to herself? Oh, little rebel! You tried your best not to let me see. But
you _were_ angry, you were! Now, then, how to proceed? She is all fire,
all character; I rejoice in it. She will give me trouble; so much the
better. Poor little hurt thing! the fight is only beginning; but I will
make her do penance some day for all that loftiness to-night.'

If these reflections betray to the reader a certain masterful note of
confidence in Mr. Flaxman's mind, he will perhaps find small cause to
regret that Rose _did_ give him a great deal of trouble.

Nothing could have been more 'salutary,' to use his own word, than the
dance she led him during the next three weeks. She provoked him indeed
at moments so much that he was a hundred times on the point of trying to
seize his kingdom of heaven by violence, of throwing himself upon her
with a tempest shock of reproach and appeal. But some secret instinct
restrained him. She was wilful, she was capricious; she had a real and
powerful distraction in her art. He must be patient and risk nothing.

He suspected, too, what was the truth--that Lady Charlotte was doing
harm. Rose, indeed, had grown so touchily sensitive that she found
offence in almost every word of Lady Charlotte's about her nephew. Why
should the apparently casual remarks of the aunt bear so constantly on
the subject of the nephew's social im