a concert. It turned out to
be a public-house, and my father would not let me go; but I was sorry;
for in public the man could not touch me as he did. It damped the voice!"

"I should like to know where that fellow lives," cried the cornet.

"I don't know, I'm sure," she said. "He lends money. Do you want any? I
heard your sisters say something, one day. You can always have all that I
have, you know."

A quick spirit of pity and honest kindness went through Wilfrid's veins
and threatened to play the woman with his eyes, for a moment. He took her
hand and pressed it. She put her lips to his fingers.

"Once," she continued, "when the Jew gentleman had left, I spoke to my
father of his way with me, and then my father took me on his knee, and
the things he told me of what that man felt for me made my mother come
and tear me away to bed. I was obliged to submit to the Jew gentleman
patting and touching me always. He used to crush my dreams afterwards! I
know my voice was going. My father was so eager for me to please him, I
did my best; but I felt dull, and used to sit and shake my head at my
harp, crying; or else I felt like an angry animal, and could have torn
the strings.

"Think how astonished I was when my mother came to me to say my father
had money in his pockets!--one pound, seventeen shillings, she counted:
and he had not been playing! Then he brought home a new violin, and he
said to me, 'I shall go; I shall play; I am Orphee, and dinners shall
rise!' I was glad, and kissed him; and he said, 'This is Sandra's gift to
me,' showing the violin. I only knew what that meant two days afterwards.
Is a girl not seventeen fit to be married?"

With this abrupt and singular question she had taken an indignant figure,
and her eyes were fiery: so that Wilfrid thought her much fitter than a
minute before.

"Married!" she exclaimed. "My mother told me about that. You do not
belong to yourself: you are tied down. You are a slave, a drudge; mustn't
dream, mustn't think! I hate it. By-and-by, I suppose it will happen. Not
yet! And yet that man offered to take me to Italy. It was the Jew
gentleman. He said I should make money, if he took me, and grow as rich
as princesses. He brought a friend to hear me, another Jew gentleman; and
he was delighted, and he met me near our door the very next morning, and
offered me a ring with blue stones, and he proposed to marry me also, and
take me to Italy, if I would give up his friend and