ll to-day, and doesn't like to come. And your younger sister prefers
also to stay in town. Helen is much disappointed, so am I. But----' And
he shrugged his shoulders.

Robert found it difficult to make a suitable remark. His sisters-in-law
were certainly inscrutable young women. This Easter party at Greenlaws,
Mr. Flaxman's country house, had been planned, he knew, for weeks. And
certainly nothing could be very wrong with Mrs. Leyburn, or Catherine
would have been warned.

'I am afraid your plans must be greatly put out,' he said, with some
embarrassment.

'Of course they are,' replied Flaxman, with a dry smile. He stood
opposite Elsmere, his hands in his pockets.

'Will you have a confidence?' the bright eyes seemed to say. 'I am quite
ready. Claim it if you like.'

But Elsmere had no intention of claiming it. The position of all Rose's
kindred, indeed, at the present moment was not easy. None of them had
the least knowledge of Rose's mind. Had she forgotten Langham? Had she
lost her heart afresh to Flaxman? No one knew. Flaxman's absorption in
her was clear enough. But his love-making, if it was such, was not of an
ordinary kind, and did not always explain itself. And, moreover, his
wealth and social position were elements in the situation calculated to
make people like the Elsmeres particularly diffident and discreet.
Impossible for them, much as they liked him, to make any of the
advances!

No, Robert wanted no confidences. He was not prepared to take the
responsibility of them. So, letting Rose alone, he took up his visitor's
invitation to themselves, and explained the engagement for Easter Eve,
which tied them to London.

'Whew!' said Hugh Flaxman, 'but that will be a shindy worth seeing. I
must come!'

'Nonsense!' said Robert, smiling. 'Go down to Greenlaws, and go to
church. That will be much more in your line.'

'As for church,' said Flaxman meditatively, 'if I put off my party
altogether, and stay in town, there will be this further advantage,
that, after hearing you on Saturday night, I can, with a blameless
impartiality, spend the following day in St. Andrew's, Well Street.
Yes! I telegraph to Helen--she knows my ways--and I come down to protect
you against an atheistical mob to-morrow night!'

Robert tried to dissuade him. He did not want Flaxman. Flaxman's
Epicureanism, the easy tolerance with which, now that the effervescence
of his youth had subsided, the man harboured and dallied with a do