Dear Rose Arundel (excuse us the adjective, kind reader, for we frankly own to being very fond of her), having been a perfect godsend to everybody during the whole morning of the party day, having thought of everything and done everything, and looked on the bright side of everything, and sacrificed herself so pleasantly that an uninitiated beholder might have imagined her intensely selfish and doing it all for her own personal gratification,--Rose having, amongst other gymnastics of self-devotion, run up and down stairs forty-three times in pursuit of waifs and strays from Lady Lombard’s memory, committed the first bit of selfishness of which she had been guilty all day, by sitting down to rest for five minutes before she began her toilet; and leaning her forehead on her hand, thought over her own chances of pleasure or amusement during the evening. She had had one disappointment: Lewis had been invited, and Lewis would not come. He did not say he could not come, but he put on what Mrs. Arundel called his “iron-face,” and said shortly, “the thing was impossible;” and no one could have looked on his compressed lips and doubted the truth of the assertion. It grieved Rose, for she read his soul as it were an open book before her, and she saw there pride, that curse of noble minds, still unsubdued. Lady Lombard patronised them, and Lewis could not submit to witness it. Rose had hoped better things than this; she had not failed to observe the change that had taken place in her brother during his residence at Broadhurst; she saw that from an ardent, impetuous boy he had become an earnest-minded, high-souled man, and in the calm dignity of his look and bearing she recognised the evidence of conscious power, chastened by the discipline of a mind great enough to rule itself. Nor was she wrong in her conjectures; only she mistook a part for the whole, and arguing with the gentle sophistry of a woman’s loving heart, concluded that to be finished which was but in fact begun. Lewis had learned to _control_ (except in rare instances) his haughty nature, but he relied too much on his own strength, and so he had failed as yet to subdue it. Rose was too honest to disguise the truth from herself when it was fairly placed before her, and she acknowledged, with an aching heart that the great fault of her brother’s character yet remained unconquered. Poor Rose! as this conviction forced itself upon her, how she sorrowed over it. He was so good, so noble, and she loved him so entirely--oh! why was he not perfect? If Lewis could have read her thoughts at that moment he would have assuredly made one of the guests at Lady Lombard’s hospitable board.