own on him had grown pale.

'We make our own destiny,' she said impatiently. '_We_ choose. It is all
our own doing. Perhaps destiny begins things--friendship, for instance;
but afterward it is absurd to talk of anything but ourselves. We keep
our friends, our chances, our--our joys,' she went on hurriedly, trying
desperately to generalize, 'or we throw them away wilfully, because we
choose.'

Their eyes were riveted on each other.

'Not wilfully,' he said under his breath. 'But--no matter. May I take
you at your word, Miss Leyburn? Wretched shirker that I am, whom even
Robert's charity despairs of: have I made a friend? Can I keep her?'

Extraordinary spell of the dark effeminate face--of its rare smile! The
girl forgot all pride, all discretion. 'Try,' she whispered, and as his
hand, stretching along the keyboard, instinctively felt for hers, for
one instant--and another, and another--she gave it to him.

'Albert, come here!' exclaimed Lady Charlotte, beckoning to her husband;
and Albert, though with a bad grace, 'obeyed. 'Just go and ask that girl
to come and talk with me, will you? Why on earth didn't you make friends
with her at dinner?'

The husband made some irritable answer, and the wife laughed.

'Just like you!' she said, with a good humor which seemed to him solely
caused by the fact of his non-success with the beauty at table. 'You
always expect to kill at the first stroke. I mean to take her in tow. Go
and bring her here.'

Mr. Wynnstay sauntered off with as much dignity as his stature was
capable of. He found Rose tying up her music at one end of the piano,
while Langham was preparing to shut up the keyboard.

There was something appeasing in the girl's handsomeness. Mr. Wynnstay
laid down his airs, paid her various compliments, and led her off to
Lady Charlotte.

Langham stood by the piano, lost in a kind of miserable dream. Mrs.
Darcy fluttered up to him.

'Oh, Mr. Langham, you play so _beautifully!_ Do Play a solo!'

He subsided onto the music-bench obediently. On any ordinary occasion
tortures could not have induced him to perform in a room full of
strangers. He had far too lively and fastidious a sense of the futility
of the amateur.

But he played-what, he knew not. Nobody listened but Mrs. Darcy, who sat
lost in an armchair a little way off, her tiny foot beating time. Rose
stopped talking, started, tried to listen. But Lady Charlotte had had
enough music, and so had Mr. Longstaffe,