, I've pledged myself to dispose
of a certain number of tickets. My friend is so much in request--it's
expecting too much to ask him to sing for nothing. I think I'll write.
Good-evening!"

Left alone with her pupils, Miss Minerva looked at her watch. "Prepare
your lessons for to-morrow," she said.

The girls produced their books. Maria's library of knowledge was in
perfect order. The pages over which Zo pondered in endless perplexity
were crumpled by weary fingers, and stained by frequent tears. Oh, fatal
knowledge! mercifully forbidden to the first two of our race, who shall
count the crimes and stupidities committed in your name?

Miss Minerva leaned back in her easy-chair. Her mind was occupied by the
mysterious question of Ovid's presence at the concert. She raised her
keenly penetrating eyes to the ceiling, and listened for sounds from
above.

"I wonder," she thought to herself, "what they are doing upstairs?"

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Gallilee was as complete a mistress of the practice of domestic
virtue as of the theory of acoustics and fainting fits. At dressing
with taste, and ordering dinners with invention; at heading her table
gracefully, and making her guests comfortable; at managing refractory
servants and detecting dishonest tradespeople, she was the equal of
the least intellectual woman that ever lived. Her preparations for the
reception of her niece were finished in advance, without an oversight
in the smallest detail. Carmina's inviting bedroom, in blue, opened
into Carmina's irresistible sitting-room, in brown. The ventilation
was arranged, the light and shade were disposed, the flowers were
attractively placed, under Mrs. Gallilee's infallible superintendence.
Before Carmina had recovered her senses she was provided with a second
mother, who played the part to perfection.

The four persons, now assembled in the pretty sitting-room upstairs,
were in a position of insupportable embarrassment towards each other.

Finding her son at a concert (after he had told her that he hated music)
Mrs. Gallilee, had first discovered him hurrying to the assistance of
a young lady in a swoon, with all the anxiety and alarm which he might
have shown in the case of a near and dear friend. And yet, when this
stranger was revealed as a relation, he had displayed an amazement equal
to her own! What explanation could reconcile such contradictions as
these?

As for Carmina, her conduct complicated the mystery.