Mr. Digby's musings had much less to do with the surface of things. I doubt indeed if he saw ought that was before his eyes, all the way to the Park. Not even Rotha herself; and yet she was the main subject of his cogitations. He was feeling that his kindness to Mrs. Carpenter had brought him into difficulties. The very occasion for this journey to the Park was bad enough; so disagreeable in fact that he did not like to look at it, and hardly had looked at it until now; he was going as a man goes into battle; and a rain of bullets, he thought, would have been easier to face. How he should accomplish his task he had as yet no idea. But supposing it done; and supposing all the trouble past for which he had to prepare Rotha; what then? What was he to do with the charge he had assumed? He, a young man without a family, with no proper home in the country of his abode, what was he to do with the care of a girl like Rotha? how should he manage it? If she had been a little child it would have been a more simple affair; but fourteen years old is not at all far removed from seventeen, and eighteen. Where should _her_ home be? and her future sphere of life? and where was the promised womanly protection under which he was to place her? He gave a glance at the girl. She was good material to work upon, that was one alleviation of his task; he had had some practical proof of it, and now, more carefully than ever before, he looked for the outward signs and tokens in feature and expression. And as Rotha had once declared that Mr. Digby's eyes were handsome, he now privately returned the compliment to hers. Yes, this child, who had an awkward appearance as to her figure--he did not know then that the effect was due to her dress--she had undoubtedly fine eyes. Poor complexion, he said to himself after a second glance, but good eyes. And not merely in shape and hue; they were full of speculation, full of thought, full of the possibilities of passion and feeling. There was character in them; and so there was in the well formed, well closed mouth. _There_ was refinement too; the lines were not those of an uncultured, low- conditioned nature; they were fine and beautiful. It had never occurred to Mr. Digby before to think how Rotha promised to be in the matter of looks; although he had many a time caught the gleam of intelligent fire in the course of her recitations and his lesson giving, and once or twice had seen that passion of one kind or another was at work. He read now very plainly that his charge, to go back to the old philosophy of human nature which reckoned man to be composed of the four elements, had a great deal of the fire and the air in her composition, with little of the heaviness of the earth, and as little as possible of the lymphatic quality. It made his task the more interesting, and in so far lightened it; but it made it at the same time vastly more difficult. Here was a