useless books,
gradually thrown off by the great collection all around. There were
innumerable volumes in frayed or broken bindings lying on the ground. A
musty smell hung over it all; the gray light from outside, which seemed
to give only an added subtlety and charm, to the other portions of
the ancient building through which they had been moving, seemed here
_triste_ and dreary. Or Langham fancied it.

He passed the threshold again with a little sigh, and saw suddenly
before him at the end of the suite of rooms, and framed in the doorways
facing him, an engraving of a Greuze picture--a girl's face turned over
her shoulder, the hair waving about her temples, the lips parted, the
teeth gleaming mirth and provocation and tender yielding in every line.
Langham started, and the blood rushed to his heart. It was as though
Rose herself stood there and beckoned to him.

CHAPTER XV.

'Now, having seen our sight,' said Robert, as they left the great mass
of Murewell behind them, 'come and see our scandal. Both run by the
same proprietor, if you please. There is a hamlet down there in the
hollow'--and he pointed to a gray speck in the distance--'I which
deserves a Royal Commission all to itself, which is a _disgrace_'--and
his tone warmed--'to any country, any owner, any agent! It is owned
by Mr. Wendover, and I see the pleasing prospect straight before me of
beginning my acquaintance with him by a fight over it. You will admit
that it is a little hard on a man who wants to live on good terms with
the possessor of the Murewell library to have to open relations with him
by a fierce attack on his drains and his pigsties.'

He turned to his companion with a half-rueful spark of laughter in
his gray, eyes. Langham hardly caught what he said. He was far away in
meditations of his own.

'An attack,' he repeated vaguely; 'why an attack?'

Robert plunged again into the great topic of which his quick mind was
evidently full. Langham tried to listen, but was conscious that his
friend's social enthusiasms bored him a great deal. And side by side
with the consciousness there slid in a little stinging reflection that
four years ago no talk of Elsmere's could have bored him.

'What's the matter with this particular place?' he asked languidly,
at last, raising his eyes toward the group of houses now beginning to
emerge from the distance.

An angry, red mounted in Robert's cheek.

'What isn't the matter with it? The houses which