out of sight. He had the skill to see that she was in a state
of reaction, of moral and mental fatigue. What she mutely seemed to ask
of her friends was not to be made to feel.

He took his cue accordingly. He talked to his sister. He kept Lady
Charlotte in order. After all her eager expectation on Hugh's behalf,
Lady Helen had been dumfounded by the sudden emergence of Langham
at Lady Charlotte's party for their common discomfiture. Who was the
man?--why?--what did it all mean? Hugh had the most provoking way of
giving you half his confidence. To tell you he was seriously in love,
and to omit to add the trifling item that the girl in question was
probably on the point of engaging herself to somebody else! Lady Helen
made believe to be angry, and it was not till she had reduced Hugh to a
whimsical penitence and a full confession of all he knew or suspected,
that she consented, with as much loftiness as the physique of an elf
allowed her, to be his good friend again, and to play those cards for
him which at the moment he could not play for himself.

So in the cheeriest, daintiest way Rose was made much of by both brother
and sister. Lady Helen chatted of gowns and music and people, whisked
Rose and Agnes off to this party and that, brought fruit and flowers to
Mrs. Leyburn, made pretty deferential love to Catherine, and generally,
to Mrs. Pierson's disgust, became the girls' chief chaperon in a fast
filling London. Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman was always there to befriend or
amuse his sister's _protegees_--always there, but never in the way. He
was bantering, sympathetic, critical, laudatory, what you will; but all
the time he preserved a delicate distance between himself and Rose, a
bright nonchalance and impersonality of tone toward her which made his
companionship a perpetual tonic. And, between them, he and Helen coerced
Lady Charlotte. A few inconvenient inquiries after Rose's health, a
few unexplained stares and 'humphs' and grunts, a few irrelevant
disquisitions on her nephew's merits of head and heart, were all she was
able to allow herself. And yet she was inwardly seething with a mass
of sentiments, to which it would have been pleasant to give
expression--anger with Rose for having been so blind and so presumptuous
as to prefer some one else to Hugh; terror with Hugh for his persistent
disregard of her advice and the Duke's feelings; and a burning desire to
know the precise why and wherefore of Langham's disappearanc