"Well, you stay and talk to Henry, and I'll go down," she replied.

She rose as she spoke, and as she turned to leave the room, she laid
her hand, with a curiously caressing gesture, upon Rodney's shoulder.
Instantly Rodney clasped her hand in his, with such an impulse of
emotion that Henry was annoyed, and rather ostentatiously opened a book.

"I shall come down with you," said William, as she drew back her hand,
and made as if to pass him.

"Oh no," she said hastily. "You stay here and talk to Henry."

"Yes, do," said Henry, shutting up his book again. His invitation was
polite, without being precisely cordial. Rodney evidently hesitated as
to the course he should pursue, but seeing Katharine at the door, he
exclaimed:

"No. I want to come with you."

She looked back, and said in a very commanding tone, and with an
expression of authority upon her face:

"It's useless for you to come. I shall go to bed in ten minutes. Good
night."

She nodded to them both, but Henry could not help noticing that her last
nod was in his direction. Rodney sat down rather heavily.

His mortification was so obvious that Henry scarcely liked to open the
conversation with some remark of a literary character. On the other
hand, unless he checked him, Rodney might begin to talk about his
feelings, and irreticence is apt to be extremely painful, at any rate in
prospect. He therefore adopted a middle course; that is to say, he
wrote a note upon the fly-leaf of his book, which ran, "The situation
is becoming most uncomfortable." This he decorated with those flourishes
and decorative borders which grow of themselves upon these occasions;
and as he did so, he thought to himself that whatever Katharine's
difficulties might be, they did not justify her behavior. She had spoken
with a kind of brutality which suggested that, whether it is natural or
assumed, women have a peculiar blindness to the feelings of men.

The penciling of this note gave Rodney time to recover himself. Perhaps,
for he was a very vain man, he was more hurt that Henry had seen him
rebuffed than by the rebuff itself. He was in love with Katharine,
and vanity is not decreased but increased by love; especially, one may
hazard, in the presence of one's own sex. But Rodney enjoyed the courage
which springs from that laughable and lovable defect, and when he had
mastered his first impulse, in some way to make a fool of himself, he
drew inspiration from the perfect fit of h