f our social life depending on him. And what a strange,
unmanageable, inexplicable being!'

Elsmere sighed aloud. Like all quick imaginative natures he was easily
depressed, and the Squire's sombre figure had for the moment darkened
his whole horizon. Catherine laid her check against his arm in the
darkness, consoling, remonstrating, every other thought lost in her
sympathy with Robert's worries. Langham and Rose slipped out of her
head; Elsmere's step had quickened as it always did when he was excited,
and she kept up without thinking.

When Langham found the others had shot ahead in the darkness, and he
and his neighbor were _tete-a-tete_, despair seized him. But for once
he showed a sort of dreary presence of mind. Suddenly, while the girl
beside him was floating in a golden dream of feeling he plunged with a
stiff deliberation born of his inner conflict into a discussion of the
German system of musical training. Rose, startled, made some vague and
flippant reply. Langham pursued the matter. He had some information
about it, it appeared, garnered up in his mind, which might perhaps some
day prove useful to her. A St. Anselm's undergraduate, one Dashwood, an
old pupil of his, had been lately at Berlin for six months, studying
at the Conservatorium. Not long ago, being anxious to become a
schoolmaster, he had written to Langham for a testimonial. His letter
had contained a full account of his musical life. Langham proceeded to
recapitulate it.

His careful and precise report of hours, fees, masters, and methods
lasted till they reached the park gate. He had the smallest powers of
social acting, and his _role_ was dismally overdone. The girl beside him
could not know that he was really defending her from himself. His cold
altered manner merely seemed to her a sudden and marked withdrawal of
his petition for her friendship. No doubt she had received that petition
too effusively--and he wished there should be no mistake.

What a young smarting soul went through in that half mile of listening
is better guessed than analyzed. There are certain moments of shame,
which only women know, and which seem to sting and burn out of youth all
its natural sweet self-love. A woman may outlive them, but never forget
them. If she pass through one at nineteen her cheek will grow hot over
it at seventy. Her companion's measured tone, the flow of deliberate
speech which came from him, the nervous aloofness of his attitude--every
detail