wardly, the color spreading
over her face. 'I came to look for a book.'

She made a delicious picture as she stood framed in the darkness of
the doorway, her long dress caught up round her in one hand, the other
resting on the handle. A gust of some delicate perfume seemed to enter
the room with her, and a thrill of pleasure passed through Langham's
senses.

Can I find anything for you?' he said, springing up.

She hesitated a moment, then apparently made up her mind that it would
be foolish to retreat, and, coming forward, she said, with an accent as
coldly polite as she could make it,--

'Pray don't disturb yourself. I know exactly where to find it.'

She went up to the shelves where Robert kept his novels, and began
running her fingers over the books, with slightly knitted brows and a
mouth severely shut. Langham, still standing, watched her and presently
stepped forward.

'You can't reach those upper shelves,' he said; 'please let me.'

He was already beside her, and she gave way.

'I want "Charles Auchester,"' she said, still forbiddingly. It ought to
be there.'

'Oh, that queer musical novel--I know it quite well. No sign of it
here,' and he ran over the shelves with the practised eye of one
accustomed to deal with books.

'Robert must have lent it,' said Rose, with a little sigh. 'Never mind,
please. It doesn't matter,' and she was already moving away.

'Try some other, instead,' he said, smiling, his arm still upstretched.
'Robert has no lack of choice.' His manner had an animation and ease
usually quite foreign to it. Rose stopped, and her lips relaxed a
little.

'He is very nearly as bad as the novel-reading bishop, who was reduced
at last to stealing the servant's "Family Herald" out of the kitchen
cupboard,' she said, a smile dawning.

Langham laughed.

'Has he such an episcopal appetite for them? That accounts for the fact
that when he and I begin to task novels I am always nowhere.'

'I shouldn't have supposed you ever read them,' said Rose, obeying an
irresistible impulse, and biting her lip the moment afterward.

'Do you think that we poor people at Oxford are always condemned to
works on the "enclitic de**"?' he asked, his fine eyes lit up with
gayety, and his head, of which the Greek outlines were ordinarily so
much disguised by his stoop and hesitating look, thrown back against the
books behind him.

Natures like Langham's, in which the nerves are never normal, have their
moment