ndon
society. The girl, in spite of all her beauty, and her fashion, and the
little studied details of her dress, was in reality so crude, so much
of a child under it all, that it made her audacities and assumptions the
more absurd, and he could see that Robert was vastly amused by them.

But Langham was not merely amused by her. She was too beautiful and too
full of character.

It astonished him to find himself afterward edging over to the corner
where she sat with the Rectory cat on her knee--an inferior animal, but
the best substitute for Chattie available. So it was, however; and once
in her neighborhood he made another serious effort to get her to talk to
him. The Elsmeres had never seen him so conversational. He dropped his
paradoxical melancholy; he roared as gently as any sucking dove; and
Robert, catching from the pessimist of St. Anselm's, as the evening went
on, some hesitating common-places worthy of a bashful undergraduate on
the subject of the boats and Commemoration, had to beat a hasty retreat,
so greatly did the situation tickle his sense of humor.

But the tutor made his various ventures under a discouraging sense of
failure. What a capricious, ambiguous creature it was, how fearless, how
disagreeably alive to all his own damaging peculiarities! Never had he
been so piqued for years, and as he floundered about trying to find
some common ground where he and she might be at ease, he was conscious
throughout of her mocking indifferent eyes, which seemed to be saying
to him all the time, 'You are not interesting,--no, not a bit! You are
tiresome, and I see through you, but I must talk to you, I suppose,
_faute de mieux_.'

Long before the little party separated for the night, Langham had given
it up, and had betaken himself to Catherine, reminding himself with some
sharpness that he had come down to study his friend's life, rather than
the humors of a provoking girl. How still the summer night was round the
isolated rectory; how fresh and spotless were all the appointments of
the house; what a Quaker neatness and refinement everywhere! He drank in
the scent of air and flowers with which the rooms were filled; for the
first time his fastidious sense was pleasantly conscious of Catherine's
grave beauty; and even the mystic ceremonies of family prayer had
a certain charm for him, pagan as he was. How much dignity and
persuasiveness it has still he thought to himself, this commonplace
country life of ours,