prightly than ever.

At the rectory gate Robert ran on to overtake a farmer on the road. Rose
stooped to open the latch; Langham mechanically made a quick movement
forward to anticipate her. Their fingers touched; she drew hers hastily
away and passed in, an erect and dignified figure, in her curving garden
hat.

Langham went straight up to his room, shut the door, and stood before
the open window, deaf and blind to everything save an inward storm of
sensation.

'Fool! Idiot!' he said to himself at last, with fierce stifled emphasis,
while a kind of dumb fury with himself and circumstance swept through
him.

That he, the poor and solitary student whose only sources of
self-respect lay in the deliberate limitations, the reasoned and
reasonable renunciations he had imposed upon his life, should have
needed the reminder of his old pupil not to fall in love with his
brilliant ambitious sister! His irritable self-consciousness enormously
magnified Elsmere's motive and Elsmere's words. That golden vagueness
and softness of temper which had possessed him since his last sight of
her gave place to one of bitter tension.

With sardonic scorn he pointed out to himself that his imagination was
still held by, his nerves were still thrilling under, the mental image
of a girl looking up to him as no woman had ever looked--a girl,
white-armed, white-necked--with softened eyes of appeal and confidence.
He bade himself mark that during the whole of his morning walk with
Robert down to its last stage, his mind had been really absorbed in some
preposterous dream he was now too self-contemptuous to analyse. Pretty
well for a philosopher, in four days! What a ridiculous business is
life--what a contemptible creature is man, how incapable of dignity, of
consistency!

At luncheon he talked rather more than usual, especially on literary
matters with Robert. Rose, too, was fully occupied in giving Catherine a
sarcastic account of a singing lesson she had been administering in the
school that morning. Catherine winced sometimes at the tone of it.

That afternoon Robert, in high spirits, his rod over his shoulder, his
basket at his back, carried off his guest for a lounging afternoon along
the river. Elsmere enjoyed these fishing expeditions like a boy. They
were his holidays, relished all the more because he kept a jealous
account of them with his conscience. He sauntered along, now throwing a
cunning and effectual fly, now resting, smok