ething she saw outside.

It was nothing, however, but the figures of Rose and Langham strolling
round the garden. A bystander would have been puzzled by the sudden
knitting of Catherine's brows over it.

Rose held a red parasol, which gleamed against the trees; Dandie leapt
about her, but she was too busy talking to take much notice of him.
Talking, chattering, to that cold cynic of a man, for whom only
yesterday she had scarcely had a civil word! Catherine felt herself a
prey to all sorts of vague, unreasonable alarms.

Robert had said to her the night before, with an odd look: 'Wifie,
when I came in I found Langham and Rose had been spending the evening
together in the study. And I don't, know when I have seen Langham so
brilliant or so alive as in our smoking talk just now!'

Catherine had laughed him to scorn; but, all the same, she had been a
little longer going to sleep than usual. She felt herself almost as much
as ever the guardian of her sisters, and the old sensitive nerve was set
quivering. And now there could be no question about it--Rose had changed
her ground toward Mr. Langham altogether. Her manner at breakfast was
evidence enough of it.

Catherine's self-torturing mind leapt on for an instant to all sorts of
horrors. _That_ man!--and she and Robert responsible to her mother and
her dead father! Never! Then she scolded herself back to common-sense.
Rose and he had discovered a common subject in music and musicians. That
would be quite enough to account for the new-born friendship on Rose's
part. And in five more days, the limit of Langham's stay, nothing very
dreadful _could_ happen, argued the reserved Catherine.

But she was uneasy, and after a bit, as that _tete-a-tete_ in the garden
still went on, she could not, for the life of her, help interfering. She
strolled out to meet them with some woollen stuff hanging over her arm,
and made a plaintive and smiling appeal to Rose to come and help her
with some preparations for a mothers' meeting to be held that afternoon.
Rose, who was supposed by the family to be 'taking care' of her sister
at a critical time, had a moment's prick of conscience, and went off
with a good grace. Langham felt vaguely that he owed Mrs. Elsmere
another grudge, but he resigned himself and took out a cigarette,
wherewith to console himself for the loss of his companion.

Presently, as he stood for a moment turning over some new books on the
drawing-room table, Rose came in.