ed itself,
and she was soon planning and deciding as sharply, and with as much
young omniscience, as usual.

By the evening it was settled. Mrs. Leyburn, much bewildered, asked
Catherine doubtfully, the last thing at night, whether she wanted Rose
to be a professional. Catherine exclaimed.

'But, my dear,' said the widow, staring pensively into her bedroom fire,
'what's she to do with all this music?' Then after a second she added
half severely: 'I don't believe her father would have liked it; I don't,
indeed, Catherine!'

Poor Catherine smiled and sighed in the background, but made no reply.

'However, she never looks so pretty as when she's playing the
violin--never!' said Mrs. Leyburn presently in the distance, with a long
breath of satisfaction. 'She's got such a lovely hand and arm,
Catherine! They're prettier than mine, and even your father used to
notice mine.'

'_Even._' The word had a little sound of bitterness. In spite of all his
love, had the gentle puzzle-headed woman found her unearthly husband
often very hard to live with?

Rose meanwhile was sitting up in bed, with her hands round her knees,
dreaming. So she had got her heart's desire! There did not seem to be
much joy in the getting, but that was the way of things, one was told.
She knew she should hate the Germans--great, bouncing, over-fed,
sentimental creatures!

Then her thoughts ran into the future. After six months--yes, by
April--she would be home, and Agnes and her mother could meet her in
London.

_London._ Ah, it was London she was thinking of all the time, not
Berlin! She could not stay in the present; or rather the Rose of the
present went straining to the Rose of the future, asking to be righted,
to be avenged.

'I will learn--I will learn fast--many things besides music!' she said
to herself feverishly. 'By April I shall be _much_ cleverer. Oh, _then_
I won't be a fool so easily. We shall be sure to meet, of course. But he
shall find out that it was only a _child_, only a silly soft-hearted
baby he played with down here. I shan't care for him in the least, of
course not, not after six months. I don't _mean_ to. And I will make him
know it--oh, I will, though he is so wise, and so much older, and mounts
on such stilts when he pleases!'

So once more Rose flung her defiance at fate. But when Catherine came
along the passage an hour later she heard low sounds from Rose's room,
which ceased abruptly as her step drew near. The eld