‘What do you suppose Langham has been entertaining Rose with on the way, Catherine? I wouldn’t miss her remarks to-night on the escort we provided her for a good deal.’ Catherine said nothing, but her delicate eyebrows went up a little. Robert stooped and lightly kissed her. ‘You never performed a greater art of virtue even in _your_ life Mrs. Elsmere, than when you wrote Langham that nice letter of invitation.’ And then the young Rector sighed, as many a boyish memory came crowding upon him. A sound of wheels! Robert’s long legs took him to the gate in a twinkling, and he flung it open just as Rose drove up in fine style, a thin dark man beside her. Rose lent her bright cheek to Catherine’s kiss, and the two sisters walked up to the door together, while Robert and Langham loitered after them talking. ‘Oh, Catherine!’ said Rose under her breath, as they got into the drawing-room, with a little theatrical gesture, ‘why on earth did you inflict that man and me on each other for two mortal hours?’ ‘Sh-sh!’ said Catherine’s lips, while her face gleamed with laughter. Rose sank flushed upon a chair, her eyes glancing up with a little furtive anger in them as the two gentlemen entered the room. ‘You found each other easily at Waterloo?’ asked Robert. ‘Mr. Langham would never have found me,’ said Rose, dryly, ‘but I pounced on him at last, just, I believe, as he was beginning to cherish the hope of an empty carriage and the solitary enjoyment of his “Saturday Review.”’ Langham smiled nervously. ‘Miss Leyburn is too hard on a blind man,’ he said, holding up his eye-glass apologetically; ‘it was my eyes, not my will, that were fault.’ Rose’s lip curled a little. ‘And Robert,’ she cried, bending forward as though something had just occurred to her, ‘do tell, me--I vowed I would ask--_is_ Mr. Langham a Liberal or a conservative? _He_ doesn’t know!’ Robert laughed, so did Langham. ‘Your sister,’ he said, flushing, ‘will have one so very precise in all one says.’ He turned his handsome olive face toward her, an unwonted spark of animation lighting up his black eyes. It was evident that he felt himself persecuted, but it was not so evident whether he enjoyed the process or disliked it. ‘Oh dear, no!’ said Rose nonchalantly. ‘Only I have just come from a house where everybody either loathes Mr. Gladstone or would die for him to-morrow. There was a girl of seven and a boy of nine who were always discussing “Coercion” in the corners of the schoolroom. So, of course, I have grown political too, and began to catechize Mr. Langham at once, and when he said “he didn’t know,” I felt I should like to set those children at him! They would soon put some principles into him!’ ‘It is not generally lack of principle, Miss Rose,’ said her brother-in-law, ‘that turns a man a doubter in politics, but too much!’