; her hair was closely rolled and twisted about her
lightly balanced head; everything about her was treat and fresh and
tight-fitting. A year ago she had been a damsel from the 'Earthly
Paradise;' now, so far as an English girl can achieve it she might have
been a model for Tissot. In this phase, as in the other, there was a
touch of extravagance. The girl was developing fast, but had clearly not
yet developed. The restlessness, the self-consciousness of Long Whindale
were still there; but they spoke to the spectator in different ways.

But in her anxious study of her sister Catherine did not forget her
place of hostess. 'Did our man bring you through the park, Mr. Langham?'
she asked him timidly.

'Yes. What an exquisite old house!' he said, turning to her, and
feeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentle
matronly dignity of the one sister and the young self-assertion of the
other.

'Ah,' said Robert, 'I kept that as a surprise! Did you ever see a more
perfect place?'

'What date?'

'Early Tudor--as to the oldest part. It was built by a relation of
Bishop Fisher's; then largely rebuilt under James I. Elizabeth stayed
there twice. There is a trace of a visit of Sidney's. Waller was there,
and left a copy of verses in the library. Evelyn laid out a great deal
of the garden. Lord Clarendon wrote part of his History in the garden,
et cetera, et cetera. The place is steeped in associations, and as
beautiful as a dream to begin with.'

'And the owner of all this is the author of the "Idols of the Market
Place"?'

Robert nodded.

'Did you ever meet him at Oxford? I believe he was there once or twice
during my time, but I never saw him.'

'Yes,' said Langham, thinking. 'I met him at dinner at the
Vice-Chancellor's, now I remember. A bizarre and formidable person--very
difficult to talk to,' he added reflectively.

Then as he looked up he caught a sarcastic twitch of Rose Leyburn's lip
and understood it in a moment. Incontinently he forgot the Squire and
fell to asking himself what had possessed him on that luckless journey
down. He had never seemed to himself more perverse, more unmanageable;
and for once his philosophy did not enable him to swallow the certainty
that this slim flashing creature must have thought him a morbid idiot
with as much _sang-froid_ as usual.

Robert interrupted his reflections by some Oxford question, and
presently Catherine carried off Rose to her room. On t