'A week,' he said; 'no more, if you are careful.'
Her pale face brightened. Her art had seemed specially dear to her of late.
'Hugh!' called Lady Helen, going to the door. 'Now we are ready for the carriage.'
Rose leaning on Agnes walked out into the hall. They found him there waiting.
'The carriage is here,' he said, bending towards her with a look and tone which so stirred the fluttered nerves, that the sense of faintness stole back upon her. 'Let me take you to it.'
'Thank you,' she said coldly, but by a superhuman effort; 'my sister's help is quite enough.'
He followed them with Lady Helen. At the carriage door the sisters hesitated a moment. Rose was helpless without a right hand. A little imperative movement from behind displaced Agnes, and Rose felt herself hoisted in by a strong arm. She sank into the farther corner. The glow of the dawn caught her white delicate features, the curls on her temples, all the silken confusion of her dress. Hugh Flaxman put in Agnes and his sister, said something to Agnes about coming to inquire, and raised his hat. Rose caught the quick force and intensity of his eyes, and then closed her own, lost in a languid swoon of pain, memory, and resentful wonder.
Flaxman walked away down Park Lane through the chill morning quietness, the gathering light striking over the houses beside him on to the misty stretches of the Park. His hat was over his eyes, his hands thrust into his pockets; a close observer would have noticed a certain trembling of the lips. It was but a few seconds since her young warm beauty had been for an instant in his arms; his whole being was shaken by it, and by that last look of hers. 'Have I gone too far?' he asked himself anxiously. 'Is it divinely true—already—that she resents being left to herself? Oh, little rebel! You tried your best not to let me see. But you were angry, you were! Now, then, how to proceed? She is all fire, all character; I rejoice in it. She will give me trouble; so much the better. Poor little hurt thing! the fight is only beginning; but I will make her do penance some day for all that loftiness to-night.'
If these reflections betray to the reader a certain masterful note of confidence in Mr. Flaxman's mind, he will perhaps find small cause to regret that Rose did give him a great deal of trouble.
Nothing could have been more 'salutary,' to use his own word, than the dance she led him during the next three weeks. She provoked him indeed at moments so much that he was a hundred times on the point of trying to seize his kingdom of heaven by violence, of throwing himself upon her with a tempest shock of reproach and appeal. But some secret instinct restrained him. She was wilful, she was capricious; she had a real and powerful distraction in her art. He must be patient and risk nothing.