of Arcady--they slid into a delicate rippling _chant
d'amour_, the long drawn notes of the violin rising and falling on the
piano accompaniment with an exquisite plaintiveness. Where did a
_fillette_, unformed, inexperienced, win the secret of so much
eloquence--only from the natural dreams of a girl's heart as to 'the
lovers waiting in the hidden years'?

But when the music ceased, Elsmere, after a hearty clap that set the
room applauding likewise, turned not to the musician but the figure
beside Mrs. Leyburn, the sister who had sat listening with an
impassiveness, a sort of gentle remoteness of look, which had piqued his
curiosity. The mother meanwhile was drinking in the compliments of Dr.
Baker.

'Excellent!' cried Elsmere. 'How in the name of fortune, Miss Leyburn,
if I may ask, has your sister managed to get on so far in this remote
place?'

'She goes to Manchester every year to some relations we have there,'
said Catherine quietly; 'I believe she has been very well taught.'

'But surely,' he said warmly, 'it is more than teaching--more even than
talent--there is something like genius in it?'

She did not answer very readily.

'I don't know,' she said at last. 'Every one says it is very good.'

He would have been repelled by her irresponsiveness but that her last
words had in them a note of lingering, of wistfulness, as though the
subject were connected with an inner debate not yet solved which
troubled her. He was puzzled, but certainly not repelled.

Twenty minutes later everybody was going. The Seatons went first, and
the other guests lingered awhile afterwards to enjoy the sense of
freedom left by their departure. But at last the Mayhews, father and
son, set off on foot to walk home over the moonlit mountains; the doctor
tucked himself and his daughter into his high gig, and drove off with a
sweeping ironical bow to Rose, who had stood on the steps teasing him to
the last; and Robert Elsmere offered to escort the Miss Leyburns and
their mother home.

Mrs. Thornburgh was left protesting to the vicar's incredulous ears that
never--never as long as she lived--would she have Mrs. Seaton inside her
doors again.

'Her manners--' cried the vicar's wife, fuming--'her manners would
disgrace a Whinborough shop-girl. She has none--positively none!'

Then suddenly her round comfortable face brightened and broadened out
into a beaming smile--

'But, after all, William, say what you will--and you always do s