ight play as
well as any of them.'

The slight flush became a glow that spread from brow to chin. Then she
gave a long breath and turned away, her face resting on her hand.

'And I can't help thinking,' he went on, marvelling inwardly at his own
role of mentor, and his strange enjoyment of it, 'that if your father
had lived till now, and had gone with the times a little, as he must
have gone, he would have learnt to take pleasure in your pleasure, and
to fit your gift somehow into his scheme of things.'

'Catherine hasn't moved with the times,' said Rose dolefully.

Langham was silent. _Gaucherie_ seized him again when it became a
question of discussing Mrs. Elsmere, his own view was so inconveniently
emphatic.

'And you think,' she went on, 'you _really_ think, without being too
ungrateful to papa, and too unkind to the old Leyburn ghosts'--and a
little laugh danced through the vibrating voice--'I might try and get
them to give up Burwood--I might struggle to have my way? I shall, of
course I shall! I never was a meek martyr, and never shall be. But one
can't help having qualms, though one doesn't tell them to one's sisters
and cousins and aunts. And sometimes'--she turned her chin round on her
hand and looked at him with a delicious shy impulsiveness--'sometimes a
stranger sees clearer. Do _you_ think me a monster, as Catherine does?'

Even as she spoke her own words startled her--the confidence, the
abandonment of them. But she held to them bravely; only her eyelids
quivered. She had absurdly misjudged this man, and there was a warm
penitence in her heart. How kind he had been, how sympathetic!

He rose with her last words, and stood leaning against the mantelpiece,
looking down upon her gravely, with the air, as it seemed to her, of her
friend, her confessor. Her white childish brow, the little curls of
bright hair upon her temples, her parted lips, the pretty folds of the
muslin dress, the little foot on the fender--every detail of the
picture impressed itself once for all. Langham will carry it with him to
his grave.

'Tell me,' she said again, smiling divinely, as though to encourage
him--'tell me quite frankly, down to the bottom, what you think?'

The harsh noise of an opening door in the distance, and a gust of wind
sweeping through the house, voices and steps approaching. Rose sprang
up, and, for the first time during all the latter part of their
conversation, felt a sharp sense of embarrassment.