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 sangfroid as usual.
Robert interrupted his reflections by some Oxford question, and presently Catherine carried off Rose to her room. On their way they passed a door, beside which Catherine paused hesitating, and then with a bright flush on the face, which had such maternal calm in it already, she threw her arm round Rose and drew her in. It was a white empty room, smelling of the roses outside, and waiting in the evening stillness for the life that was to be. Rose looked at it all—at the piles of tiny garments, the cradle, the pictures from Retsch's 'Song of the Bell,' which had been the companion of their own childhood, on the walls—and something stirred in the girl's breast.
'Catherine, I believe you have everything you want, or you soon will have!' she cried, almost with a kind of bitterness, laying her hands on her sister's shoulders.
'Everything but worthiness!' said Catherine softly, a mist rising in her calm gray eyes. 'And you, Röschen,' she added wistfully, 'have you been getting a little more what you want?'
'What's the good of asking?' said the girl, with a little shrug of impatience. 'As if creatures like me ever got what they want! London has been good fun certainly—if one could get enough of it. Catherine, how long is that marvellous person going to stay?' and she pointed in the direction of Langham's room.
'A week,' said Catherine, smiling at the girl's disdainful tone. 'I was afraid you didn't take to him.'
'I never saw such a being before,' declared Rose—'never! I thought I should never get a plain answer from him about anything. He wasn't even quite certain it was a fine day! I wonder if you set fire to him whether he would be sure it hurt! A week, you say? Heigh ho! what an age!'
'Be kind to him,' said Catherine, discreetly veiling her own feelings, and caressing the curly golden head as they moved towards the door. 'He's a poor lone don, and he was so good to Robert!'
'Excellent reason for you, Mrs. Elsmere,' said Rose, pouting; 'but——'
Her further remarks were cut short by the sound of the front-door bell.