Robert taken you to see, Mr. Langham?'

'We went to Murewell first. The library was well worth seeing. Since
then we have been a parish round, distributing stores.'

Rose's look changed in an instant. The words were spoken by the Langham
of her earliest acquaintance. The man who that morning had asked her to
play to him had gone--vanished away.

'How exhilarating!' she said scornfully. 'Don't you wonder how anyone
can ever tear themselves away from the country?'

'Rose, don't be abusive,' said Robert, opening his eyes at her tone.
Then, passing his arm through hers he looked banteringly down upon
her. 'For the first time since you left the metropolis you have walked
yourself into a color. It's becoming--and it's Murewell--so be civil!'

'Oh, nobody denies you a high place in milkmaids!' she said, with her
head in air--and they went off into a minute's sparring.

Meanwhile, Langham, on the other side of the road, walked up slowly,
his eyes on the ground. Once, when Rose's eye caught him, a shock
ran through her. There was already a look of slovenly age, about his
stooping bookworm's gait. Her companion of the night before--handsome,
animated, human--where was he? The girl's heart felt a singular
contraction. Then she turned and rent herself, and Robert found her more
mocking and sprightly than ever.

At the Rectory gate Robert ran on to overtake a farmer on the road. Rose
stooped to open the latch; Langham mechanically made a quick movement
forward to anticipate her. Their fingers touched; she drew hers hastily
away and passed in, an erect and dignified figure, in her curving garden
hat.

Langham went straight up to his room, shut the door and stood before
the open window, deaf and blind to everything save an inward storm of
sensation.

'Fool! Idiot!' he said to himself at last, with fierce stifled emphasis,
while a kind of dumb fury with himself and circumstance swept through
him.

That he, the poor and solitary student whose only sources of
self-respect lay in the deliberate limitations, the reasoned and
reasonable renunciations he had imposed upon his life, should have
needed the reminder of his old pupil not to fall in love with his
brilliant, ambitious sister! His irritable self-consciousness enormously
magnified Elsmere's motive and Elsmere's words. That golden vagueness
and softness of temper which had possessed him since his last sight of
her gave place to one of bitter tension.

With sardonic scor