one says.'

He turned his handsome olive face toward her, an unwonted spark of
animation lighting up his black eyes. It was evident that he felt
himself persecuted, but it was not so evident whether he enjoyed the
process or disliked it.

'Oh dear, no!' said Rose nonchalantly. 'Only I have just come from a
house where everybody either loathes Mr. Gladstone or would die for him
to-morrow. There was a girl of seven and a boy of nine who were always
discussing "Coercion" in the corners of the schoolroom. So, of course,
I have grown political too, and began to catechize Mr. Langham at once,
and when he said "he didn't know," I felt I should like to set those
children at him! They would soon put some principles into him!'

'It is not generally lack of principle, Miss Rose,' said her
brother-in-law, 'that turns a man a doubter in politics, but too much!'

And while he spoke, his eyes resting on Langham, his smile broadened as
he recalled all those instances in their Oxford past, when he had taken
a humble share in one of the Herculean efforts on the part of Langham's
friends, which were always necessary whenever it was a question of
screwing a vote out of him on any debated University question.

'How dull it must be to have too much principle!' cried Rose. 'Like a
mill choked with corn. No bread because the machine can't work!'

'Defend me from my friends!' cried Langham, roused. 'Elsmere, when did I
give you a right to caricature me in this way? If I were interested,' he
added, subsiding into his usual hesitating ineffectiveness, 'I suppose I
should know my own mind.'

And then seizing the muffins, he stood presenting them to Rose as though
in deprecation of any further personalities. Inside him there was a
hot protest against an unreasonable young beauty whom he had done his
miserable best to entertain for two long hours, and who in return had
made feel himself more of a fool than he had done for years. Since when
had young women put on all these airs? In his young days they knew their
place.

Catherine meanwhile sat watching her sister. The child was more
beautiful than ever, but in other outer respects the Rose of Long
Whindale had undergone much transformation. The puffed sleeves, the
_aesthetic_ skirts, the naive adornments of bead and shell, the formless
hat, which it pleased her to imagine 'after Gainsborough,' had all
disappeared. She was clad in some soft fawn-colored garment, cut very
much in the fashion