church, but he went to parties when he had time. If he was in love
with Rose Tramore this was distracting to him only in the same sense
as his religion, and it was included in that department of his
extremely sub-divided life. His religion indeed was of an
encroaching, annexing sort. Seen from in front he looked diffident
and blank, but he was capable of exposing himself in a way (to speak
only of the paths of peace) wholly inconsistent with shyness. He had
a passion for instance for open-air speaking, but was not thought on
the whole to excel in it unless he could help himself out with a
hymn. In conversation he kept his eyes on you with a kind of
colourless candour, as if he had not understood what you were saying
and, in a fashion that made many people turn red, waited before
answering. This was only because he was considering their remarks in
more relations than they had intended. He had in his face no
expression whatever save the one just mentioned, and was, in his
profession, already very distinguished.

He had seen Rose Tramore for the first time on a Sunday of the
previous March, at a house in the country at which she was staying
with her father, and five weeks later he had made her, by letter, an
offer of marriage. She showed her father the letter of course, and
he told her that it would give him great pleasure that she should
send Captain Jay about his business. "My dear child," he said, "we
must really have some one who will be better fun than that." Rose
had declined the honour, very considerately and kindly, but not
simply because her father wished it. She didn't herself wish to
detach this flower from the stem, though when the young man wrote
again, to express the hope that he MIGHT hope--so long was he willing
to wait--and ask if he might not still sometimes see her, she
answered even more indulgently than at first. She had shown her