sweet sense of being the secret
protector of her he adored.

Meantime, Miss Rolleston's lady's maid, Wilson, fell in love with him
after her fashion; she had taken a fancy to his face at once, and he had
encouraged her a little, unintentionally; for he brought the nosegays to
her, and listened complacently to her gossip, for the sake of the few
words she let fall now and then about her young mistress. As he never
exchanged two sentences at a time with any other servant, this flattered
Sarah Wilson, and she soon began to meet and accost him oftener, and in
cherrier-colored ribbons, than he could stand. So then he showed
impatience, and then she, reading him by herself, suspected some vulgar
rival.

Suspicion soon bred jealousy, jealousy vigilance, and vigilance
detection.

Her first discovery was that, so long as she talked of Miss Helen
Rolleston, she was always welcome; her second was, that Seaton slept in
the tool-house.

She was not romantic enough to connect her two discoveries together. They
lay apart in her mind, until circumstances we are about to relate
supplied a connecting link.

One Thursday evening James Seaton's goddess sat alone with her papa,
and--being a young lady of fair abilities, who had gone through her
course of music and other studies, taught brainlessly, and who was now
going through a course of monotonous pleasures, and had not accumulated
any great store of mental resources--she was listless and languid, and
would have yawned forty times in her papa's face, only she was too
well-bred. She always turned her head away, when it came, and either
suppressed it, or else hid it with a lovely white hand. At last, as she
was a good girl, she blushed at her behavior, and roused herself up, and
said she, "Papa, shall I play you the new quadrilles?"

Papa gave a start and a shake, and said, with well-feigned vehemence,
"Ay, do, my dear," and so composed himself--to listen; and Helen sat down
and played the quadrilles.

The composer had taken immortal melodies, some gay, some sad, and had
robbed them of their distinctive character and hashed them till they were
all one monotonous rattle. But General Rolleston was little the worse for
all this. As Apollo saved Horace from hearing a poetaster's rhymes, so
did Somnus, another beneficent little deity, rescue our warrior from his
daughter's music.

She was neither angry nor surprised. A delicious smile illumined her face
directly; she crept to him on