ely Browning's poignant, passionate
note that had addicted her. In spite of all her proud, bright reserve,
both he and Helen often felt through these weeks that just below this
surface there was a heart which quivered at the least touch.

He finished the lines and laid down the book. Lady Helen heard her
three-year-old boy crying upstairs, and ran up to see what was the
matter. He and Rose were left alone in the scented, fire-lit room. And a
jet of flame suddenly showed him the girl's face turned away, convulsed
with a momentary struggle for self-control. She raised a hand an instant
to her eyes, not dreaming evidently that she could be seen in the
dimness; and her gloves dropped from her lap.

He moved forward, stooped on one knee, and as she held out her hand for
the gloves, he kissed the hand very gently, detaining it afterward as a
brother might. There was not a thought of himself in his mind. Simply he
could not bear that so bright a creature should ever be sorry. It seemed
to him intolerable, against the nature of things. If he could have
procured for her at that moment a coerced and transformed Langham, a
Langham fitted to make her happy, he could almost have done it; and,
short of such radical consolation, the very least he could do was to go
on his knee to her, and comfort her in tender, brotherly fashion.

She did not say anything; she let her hand stay a moment, and then
she got up, put on her veil, left a quiet message for Lady Helen, and
departed. But as he put her into a hansom her whole manner to him was
full of a shy, shrinking sweetness. And when Rose was shy and shrinking
she was adorable.

Well, and now he had never again gone nearly so far as to kiss her hand,
and yet because of an indiscreet moment everything was changed between
them; she had turned resentful, stand-off, nay, as nearly rude as a
girl under the restraints of modern manners can manage to be. He almost
laughed as he recalled Helen's report of her interview with Rose that
morning, in which she had tried to persuade a young person outrageously
on her dignity to keep an engagement she had herself spontaneously made.

'I am very sorry, Lady Helen,' Rose had said, her slim figure drawn up
so stiffly that the small Lady Helen felt herself totally effaced beside
her. 'But I had rather not leave London this week. I think I will stay
with mamma and Agnes.'

And nothing Lady Helen could say moved her, or modified her formula of
refusal.