Instead. _Villette_ slid a little farther from her
hand, and her pretty head still lay lightly back against the cushion.

'No, I don't find my wilds interesting at all,' she said forlornly.

'You are not fond of the people as your sister is?'

'Fond of them?' cried Rose hastily. 'I should think not; and what is
more, they don't like me. It is quite intolerable since Catherine left.
I have so much more to do with them. My other sister and I have to do
all her work. It is dreadful to have to work after somebody who has a
genius for doing just what you do worst.'

The young girl's hands fell across one another with a little impatient
gesture. Langham had a movement of the most delightful compassion
towards the petulant, childish creature. It was as though their relative
positions had been in some mysterious way reversed. During their two
days together she had been the superior, and he had felt himself at the
mercy of her scornful sharp-eyed youth. Now, he knew not how or why,
Fate seemed to have restored to him something of the man's natural
advantage, combined, for once, with the impulse to use it.

'Your sister, I suppose, has been always happy in charity?' he said.

'Oh dear, yes,' said Rose irritably; 'anything that has two legs and is
ill, that is all Catherine wants to make her happy.'

'And _you_ want something quite different, something more exciting?' he
asked, his diplomatic tone showing that he felt he dared something in
thus pressing her, but dared it at least with his wits about him. Rose
met his look irresolutely, a little tremor of self-consciousness
creeping over her.

'Yes, I want something different,' she said in a low voice and paused;
then, raising herself energetically, she clasped her hands round her
knees. 'But it is not idleness I want. I want to work, but at things I
was born for; I _can't_ have patience with old women, but I could slave
all day and all night to play the violin.'

'You want to give yourself up to study then, and live with musicians?'
he said quietly.

She shrugged her shoulders by way of answer, and began nervously to play
with her rings.

That under-self which was the work and the heritage of her father in
her, and which, beneath all the wilfulnesses and defiances of the other
self, held its own moral debates in its own way, well out of Catherine's
sight generally, began to emerge, wooed into the light by his friendly
gentleness.

'But it is all so difficult, you see