ward when they were not at home; and Rose now carelessly sent him
a card, with the inward reflection that he was much too great a man
to come, and was probably enjoying himself at country houses, as every
aristocrat should in November.

The following day the two girls made their way over to Bedford Square,
where the Elsmeres had taken a house in order to be near the British
Museum. They pushed their way upstairs through a medley of packing-cases
and a sickening smell of paint. There was a sound of an opening door,
and a gentleman stepped out of a back room, which was to be Elsmere's
study, on to the landing.

It was Edward Langham. He and Rose stood and stared at each other a
moment. Then Rose in the coolest lightest voice introduced him to Agnes.
Agnes, with one curious glance, took in her sister's defiant, smiling
ease and the stranger's embarrassment; then she went on to find
Catherine. The two left behind exchanged a few banal questions and
answers, Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling, face
and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterward he stood making a study
of the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion.
What was it had gone out of her voice--simply the soft callow sounds
of first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelve
months--how formidably, consciously brilliant in look and dress and
manner!

Yes, he was still in town--settled there, indeed, for some time. And
she--was there any special day on which Mrs. Leyburn received visitors?
He asked the question, of course, with various hesitations and
circumlocutions.

'Oh dear, yes! Will you come next Wednesday, for instance, and inspect
a musical menagerie? The animals will go through their performances from
four till seven. And I can answer for it that some of the specimens will
be entirely new to you.'

The prospect offered could hardly have been more repellent to him, but
he got out an acceptance somehow. She nodded lightly to him and passed
on, and he went downstairs, his head in a whirl. Where had the crude
pretty child of yesteryear departed to--impulsive, conceited, readily
offended, easily touched, sensitive as to what all the world might think
of her and her performances? The girl he had just left had counted all
her resources, tried the edge of all her weapons, and knew her own
place too well to ask for anybody else's appraisement. What beauty--good
heavens!--what _aplomb!_ The rich husba