to himself finally, with an
outburst of irritation due in reality to a hundred causes, that he would
assert himself, that he would make an effort at any rate to save her
from her own follies.

One afternoon, at a crowded musical party, to which he had come much
against his will, and only in obedience to a compulsion he dared not
analyze, she asked him in passing if he would kindly find Mr. MacFadden,
a bass singer, whose name stood next on the programme, and who was not
to be seen in the drawing-room.

Langham searched the dining-room and the hall, and at last found Mr.
MacFadden--a fair, flabby, unwholesome youth--in the little study or
cloak room, in a state of collapse, flanked by whisky and water, and
attended by two frightened maids, who handed over their charge to
Langham and fled.

Then it appeared that the great man had been offended by a change in the
programme, which hurt his vanity, had withdrawn from the drawing-room on
the brink of hysterics, had called for spirits, which had been provided
for him with great difficulty by Mrs. Leyburn's maids, and was there
drinking himself into a state of rage and rampant dignity which would
soon have shown itself in a melodramatic return to the drawing-room,
and a public refusal to sing at all in a house where art had been
outraged in his person.

Some of the old disciplinary instincts of the Oxford tutor awoke in
Langham at the sight of the creature, and, with a prompt sternness which
amazed himself, and nearly set MacFadden whimpering, he got rid of the
man, shut the hall door on him, and went back to the drawing-room.

'Well?' said Rose in anxiety, coming up to him.

'I have sent him away,' he said briefly, an eye of unusual quickness and
brightness looking down upon her; 'he was in no condition to sing. He
chose to be offended, apparently because he was put out of his turn, and
has been giving the servants trouble.'

Rose flushed deeply, and drew herself up with a look of half trouble,
half defiance, at Langham.

'I trust you will not ask him again,' he said, with the same decision.
'And if I might say so, there are one or two people still here whom I
should like to see you exclude at the same time.'

They had withdrawn into the bow window out of earshot of the rest of the
room. Langham's look turned significantly toward a group near the piano.
It contained one or two men whom he regarded as belonging to a low type;
men who, if it suited their purpose, woul