h, how _clever_ of you to remember it!
What it is to be clever and have a brain! But, then--I've another
hobby----'

Here, however, she stopped, hung her head and looked depressed. Robert,
with a little ripple of laughter, begged her to explain.

'No,' she said plaintively, giving a quick uneasy look at him, as though
it occurred to her that it might some day be his pastoral duty to
admonish her. 'No, it's wrong. I know it is--only I can't help it. Never
mind. You'll know soon.'

And again she turned away, when, suddenly, Rose attracted her attention,
and she stretched out a thin white bird-claw of a hand and caught the
girl's arm.

'There won't be much to amuse you to-morrow, my dear, and there ought
to be--you're so pretty!' Rose blushed furiously and tried to draw her
hand away. 'No, no! don't mind, don't mind. I didn't at your age. Well,
we'll do our best. But your own party is so _charming_!' and she looked
round the little circle, her gaze stopping specially at Langham before
it returned to Rose. 'After all, you will amuse each other.'

Was there any malice in the tiny withered creature? Rose, unsympathetic
and indifferent as youth commonly is when its own affairs absorb it, had
stood coldly outside the group which was making much of the squire's
sister. Was it so the strange little visitor revenged herself?

At any rate Rose was left feeling as if some one had pricked her. While
Catherine and Elsmere escorted Mrs. Darcy to the gate she turned to go
in, her head thrown back stag-like, her cheek still burning. Why should
it be always open to the old to annoy the young with impunity?

Langham watched her mount the first step or two; his eye travelled up
the slim figure so instinct with pride and will--and something in him
suddenly gave way. It was like a man who feels his grip relaxing on some
attacking thing he has been holding by the throat.

He followed her hastily.

'Must you go in? And none of us have paid our respects yet to those
phloxes in the back garden?'

Oh woman--flighty woman! An instant before, the girl, sore and bruised
in every fibre, she only half knew why, was thirsting that this man
might somehow offer her his neck that she might trample on it. He offers
it, and the angry instinct wavers, as a man wavers in a wrestling match
when his opponent unexpectedly gives ground. She paused, she turned her
white throat. His eyes upturned met hers.

'The phloxes did you say?' she asked, coolly r