their pedigrees and their pictures! The
aunt and nephew were debating how they could best bleed the family,
in its various branches, of the art treasures belonging to it for the
benefit of the East-enders; therefore the names were inevitable. But
Rose curled her delicate lip over them. And was it the best breeding,
she wondered, to leave a third person so ostentatiously outside the
conversation?

'Miss Leyburn, why are you coughing?' said Lady Charlotte suddenly.

'There is a great draught,' said Rose, shivering a little.

'So there is!' cried Lady Charlotte. 'Why, we have got both the windows
open. Hugh, draw up Miss Leyburn's.'

He moved over to her and drew it up.

'I thought you liked a tornado,' he said to her, smiling. 'Will you have
a shawl--there is one behind me.'

'No, thank you,' she replied rather stiffly, and he was
silent--retaining his place opposite to her, however.

'Have we reached Mr. Elsmere's part of the world yet?' asked Lady
Charlotte, looking out.

'Yes, we are not far off--the river is to our right. We shall pass St.
Wilfrid's soon.'

The coachman turned into a street where an open-air market was going on.
The roadway and pavements were swarming; the carriage could barely pick
its way through the masses of human beings. Flaming gas-jets threw it
all into strong satanic light and shade. At this corner of a dingy
alley Rose could see a fight going on; the begrimed, ragged children,
regardless of the April rain, swooped backward and forward under the
very hoofs of the horses, or flattened their noses against the windows
whenever the horses were forced into a walk.

The young girl-figure, with the gray feathered hat, seemed especially
to excite their notice. The glare of the street brought out the lines
of the face, the gold of the hair. The Arabs outside made loutishly
flattering remarks once or twice, and Rose, coloring, drew back as far
as she could into the carriage. Mr. Flaxman seemed not to hear; his
aunt, with that obtrusive thirst for information which is so fashionable
now among all women of position, was cross-questioning him as to the
trades and population of the district, and he was dryly responding. In
reality his mind was full of a whirl of feeling, of a wild longing to
break down a futile barrier and trample on a baffling resistance, to
take that beautiful, tameless creature in strong coercing arms, scold
her, crush her, love her! Why does she make happiness so difficult?