in air.

'You were introduced to Madame Desforets?' cried Langham, surprised this
time quite out of discretion. Catherine looked at him with anxiety. The
reputation of the black-eyed little French actress, who had been for a
year or two the idol of the theatrical public of Paris and London, had
reached even to her, and the tone of Langham's exclamation struck her
painfully.

'I was,' said Rose proudly. 'Other people may think it a disgrace. _I_
thought it an honour!'

Langham could not help smiling, the girl's _naivete_ was so evident. It
was clear that, if she had read _Marianne_, she had never understood it.

'Rose, you don't know!' exclaimed Catherine, turning to her sister with
a sudden trouble in her eyes. 'I don't think Mrs. Pierson ought to have
done that, without consulting mamma especially.'

'Why not?' cried Rose vehemently. Her face was burning, and her heart
was full of something like hatred of Langham, but she tried hard to be
calm.

'I think,' she said, with a desperate attempt at crushing dignity, 'that
the way in which all sorts of stories are believed against a woman, just
because she is an actress, is _disgraceful_! Just because a woman is on
the stage, everybody thinks they may throw stones at her. I _know_,
because--because she told me,' cried the speaker, growing, however, half
embarrassed as she spoke, 'that she feels the things that are said of
her deeply! She has been ill, very ill, and one of her friends said to
me, "You know it isn't her work, or a cold, or anything else that's made
her ill--it's calumny!" And so it is.'

The speaker flashed an angry glance at Langham. She was sitting on the
arm of the cane chair into which Catherine had fallen, one hand grasping
the back of the chair for support, one pointed foot beating the ground
restlessly in front of her, her small full mouth pursed indignantly, the
greenish-gray eyes flashing and brilliant.

As for Langham, the cynic within him was on the point of uncontrollable
laughter. Madame Desforets complaining of calumny to this little
Westmoreland maiden! But his eyes involuntarily met Catherine's, and the
expression of both fused into a common wonderment--amused on his side,
anxious on hers. 'What a child, what an infant it is!' they seemed to
confide to one another. Catherine laid her hand softly on Rose's, and
was about to say something soothing, which might secure her an opening
for some sisterly advice later on, when there was a sou