the man's
melancholy reserve affected the girl beside him for the second time,
precisely as they had affected her the first time. The result of
twenty-four hours' resentful meditation turned out to be precisely
_nil_. Her breath came fast, her proud look melted, and his quick sense
caught the change in an instant.

'Are you tired of Oxford?' the poor child asked him, almost shyly.

'Mortally!' he said, still smiling. 'And what is more important still,
Oxford is tired of me. I have been lecturing there for ten years. They
have had more than enough of me.'

'Oh! but Robert said'--began Rose impetuously, then stopped, crimson,
remembering many things Robert had said.

'That I helped him over a few stiles?' returned Langham calmly. 'Yes,
there was a time when I was capable of that--there was a time when
I could teach, and teach with pleasure.' He paused. Rose could have
scourged herself for the tremor she felt creeping over her. Why should
it be to her so new and strange a thing that a _man_, especially a man
of these years and this calibre, should confide in her, should speak to
her intimately of himself? After all she said to herself angrily, with
a terrified sense of importance, she was a child no longer, though her
mother and sisters would treat her as one. 'When we were chatting the
other night,' he went on, turning to her again as he stood leaning on
the gate, 'do you know what it was struck me most?'

His tone had in it the most delicate, the most friendly deference. But
Rose flushed furiously.

'That girls are very ready to talk about themselves, I imagine,' she
said scornfully.

'Not at all! Not for a moment! No, but it seemed to me so pathetic, so
strange that anybody should wish for anything so much as you wished for
the musician's life.'

'And you never wish for anything?' she cried.

'When Elsmere was at college,' he said, smiling, 'I believe I wished
he should get a First, Class. This year I have certainly wished to say
good-by to St. Anselm's, and to turn my back for good and all on my men.
I can't remember that I have wished for anything else for six years.'

She looked at him perplexed. Was his manner merely languid, or was it
from him that the emotion she felt invading herself first started? She
tried to shake it off.

'And _I_ am just a bundle of wants,' she said, half-mockingly.
'Generally speaking, I am in the condition of being ready to barter
all I have for some folly or other--one in t