Rosamond smiled, for the first time, a bright and childlike smile. She had smiled and even laughed in the course of her prelections as the same required it. But for the first time her face lighted up. “Oh, perhaps you will find there is not so much in me as you think,” she said, giving her hand to the middle-aged and much-perplexed person before her, after the fashion of the time. I forget what the fashion of the time was in those days. People had not begun at that period to shake their friends’ hands high into the air as if they were grasping a pump handle. Evelyn stood and looked after her aghast, not capable of sitting down or changing out of that pose while the girl went away. She crept out, half ashamed of doing so, into the balcony, to watch her as she appeared in the crowded road outside: and after a moment, Rosamond came forth, accompanied by a large mastiff, who performed several gambols of joy about her as she stepped out into the stream of people. Evelyn watched her going along, keeping, so to speak, the crown of the causeway, she and her dog giving place to no one. She was on her right side of the pavement, and to be hustled out of her course was an impossibility. Her strong, confident step, her half masculine dress, jacket and hat like those of a youth, were wonderful and terrible to the woman who had never moved anywhere without an attendant. She stared after this wonderful young creature with a bewilderment which almost took from her the power of thought. Later in the day Lady Leighton came in, penitentially, and in a softened mood. “I was very silly to frighten you,” she said; “I can’t think what made me such a fool. I forgot that you were you, and not any one else. I was right enough so far as ordinary society goes, only not right in respect to Evelyn Ferrars.” “Evelyn Rowland, doubly removed from your traps and snares of society,” said Evelyn with a smile. “Well--be it so;--but I hope you are not really going to give up that delightful plan about the Chester Street house, because I was silly and spoke unadvisedly with my lips. If punishment were to come upon a woman for every time she did that----” “No great punishment,” said Evelyn. “You will come and see me in my own house, and that will be better than seeing me at Chester Street--or not seeing me--you who have never a moment to yourself.” “That is true. I never have a moment to myself,” said Lady Leighton. “I am going off now to St Roque’s to see about getting Mr. Pincem, the great surgeon, to look very specially after a favourite patient of mine: and then I must come back to Grosvenor Place to a drawing-room meeting: and then--but I can sandwich you in between the two, Evelyn, if you want to go over any of those houses again.” “I don’t want to go over any of them again, thanks. I was quite satisfied with Chester Street if I had wanted any. Perhaps, however, I ought to let the people know.”