t. A burning coal fell on the hearth, and Rose hastily
withdrew her foot from the fender and looked up.

'I am so sorry!' he interjected. 'Coals never do what you want them to
do. Are you very much interested in "Villette"?'

'Deeply,' said Rose, letting the book, however, drop on her lap. She
laid back her head with a little sigh, which she did her best to check,
half way through. What ailed her to-night? She seemed wearied; for the
moment there was no fight in her with anybody. Her music, her beauty,
her mutinous, mocking gayety--these things had all worked on the man
beside her; but this new softness, this touch of childish fatigue, was
adorable.

'Charlotte Bronte wrote it out of her Brussels experience, didn't She?'
she resumed languidly. 'How sorry she must have been to come back to
that dull home and that awful brother after such a break!'

'There were reasons more than one that must have made her sorry to come
back,' said Langham, reflectively, 'But how she pined for her wilds all
through! I am afraid you don't find your wilds as interesting as she
found hers?'

His question and his smile startled her.

Her first impulse was to take up her book again, as a hint to him that
her likings were no concern of his. But something checked it, probably
the new brilliancy of that look of his, which had suddenly grown so
personal, so manly. Instead, 'Villette' slid a little further from her
hand, and her pretty head still lay lightly back against the cushion.

'No, I don't find my wilds interesting at all,' she said forlornly. 'You
are not fond of the people, as your sister is?'

'Fond of them?' cried Rose hastily. 'I should think not; and what is
more, they don't like me. It is quite intolerable since Catherine left.
I have so much more to do with them. My other sister and I have to do
all her work. It is dreadful to have to work after somebody who has a
genius for doing just what you do worst.'

The young girl's hands fell across one another with a little impatient
gesture. Langham had a movement of the most delightful compassion
toward the petulant, childish creature. It was as though their relative
positions had been in some mysterious way reversed. During their two
days together she had been the superior, and he had felt himself at the
mercy of her scornful, sharp-eyed youth. Now, he knew not how or why,
Fate seemed to have restored to him something of the man's natural
advantage, combined, for once, with the