And while he spoke, his eyes resting on Langham, his smile broadened as he recalled all those instances in their Oxford past, when he had taken a humble share in one of the Herculean efforts on the part of Langham’s friends, which were always necessary whenever it was a question of screwing a vote out of him on any debated University question. ‘How dull it must be to have too much principle!’ cried Rose. ‘Like a mill choked with corn. No bread because the machine can’t work!’ ‘Defend me from my friends!’ cried Langham, roused. ‘Elsmere, when did I give you a right to caricature me in this way? If I were interested,’ he added, subsiding into his usual hesitating ineffectiveness, ‘I suppose I should know my own mind.’ And then seizing the muffins, he stood presenting them to Rose as though in deprecation of any further personalities. Inside him there was a hot protest against an unreasonable young beauty whom he had done his miserable best to entertain for two long hours, and who in return had made feel himself more of a fool than he had done for years. Since when had young women put on all these airs? In his young days they knew their place. Catherine meanwhile sat watching her sister. The child was more beautiful than ever, but in other outer respects the Rose of Long Whindale had undergone much transformation. The puffed sleeves, the _æsthetic_ skirts, the naïve adornments of bead and shell, the formless hat, which it pleased her to imagine ‘after Gainsborough,’ had all disappeared. She was clad in some soft fawn-colored garment, cut very much in the fashion; her hair was closely rolled and twisted about her lightly balanced head; everything about her was treat and fresh and tight-fitting. A year ago she had been a damsel from the ‘Earthly Paradise;’ now, so far as an English girl can achieve it she might have been a model for Tissot. In this phase, as in the other, there was a touch of extravagance. The girl was developing fast, but had clearly not yet developed. The restlessness, the self-consciousness of Long Whindale were still there; but they spoke to the spectator in different ways. But in her anxious study of her sister Catherine did not forget her place of hostess. ‘Did our man bring you through the park, Mr. Langham?’ she asked him timidly. ‘Yes. What an exquisite old house!’ he said, turning to her, and feeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentle matronly dignity of the one sister and the young self-assertion of the other. ‘Ah,’ said Robert, ‘I kept that as a surprise! Did you ever see a more perfect place?’ ‘What date?’