'And I can't help thinking,' he went on, marvelling inwardly at his own _rôle_ of mentor, and his strange enjoyment of it, 'that if your father had lived till now, and had gone with the times a little, as he must have gone, he would have learnt to take pleasure in your pleasure, and to fit your gift somehow into his scheme of things.'
'Catherine hasn't moved with the times,' said Rose dolefully.
Langham was silent. _Gaucherie_ seized him again when it became a question of discussing Mrs. Elsmere, his own view was so inconveniently emphatic.
'And you think,' she went on, 'you _really_ think, without being too ungrateful to papa, and too unkind to the old Leyburn ghosts'--and a little laugh danced through the vibrating voice--'I might try and get them to give up Burwood--I might struggle to have my way? I shall, of course I shall! I never was a meek martyr, and never shall be. But one can't help having qualms, though one doesn't tell them to one's sisters and cousins and aunts. And sometimes'--she turned her chin round on her hand and looked at him with a delicious, shy impulsiveness--'sometimes a stranger sees clearer. Do _you_ think me a monster, as Catherine does?'
Even as she spoke her own words startled her--the confidence, the abandonment of them. But she held to them bravely; only her eyelids quivered. She had absurdly misjudged this man, and there was a warm penitence in her heart. How kind he had been, how sympathetic!
He rose with her last words, and stood leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down upon her gravely, with the air, as it seemed to her, of her friend, her confessor. Her white childish brow, the little curls of bright hair upon her temples, her parted lips, the pretty folds of the muslin dress the little foot on the fender--every detail of the picture impressed itself once for all. Langham will carry it with him to his grave.
'Tell me,' she said again, smiling divinely, as though to encourage him--'tell me quite frankly, down to the bottom, what you think?'
The harsh noise of an opening door in the distance, and a gust of wind sweeping through the house--voices and steps approaching. Rose sprang up, and for the first time during all the latter part of their conversation felt a sharp sense of embarrassment.