ieces of music privately would sing some of them now in the
order of their composers' reputations. The musical persons in the room
unconsciously resolved themselves into a committee of taste.

One and another had been tried, when, at the end of the third, a lady
spoke to Ethelberta.

'Now, Mrs. Petherwin,' she said, gracefully throwing back her face, 'your
opinion is by far the most valuable. In which of the cases do you
consider the marriage of verse and tune to have been most successful?'

Ethelberta, finding these and other unexpected calls made upon herself,
came to the front without flinching.

'The sweetest and the best that I like by far,' she said, 'is none of
these. It is one which reached me by post only this morning from a place
in Wessex, and is written by an unheard-of man who lives somewhere down
there--a man who will be, nevertheless, heard a great deal of some day, I
hope--think. I have only practised it this afternoon; but, if one's own
judgment is worth anything, it is the best.'

'Let us have your favourite, by all means,' said another friend of
Ethelberta's who was present--Mrs. Doncastle.

'I am so sorry that I cannot oblige you, since you wish to hear it,'
replied the poetess regretfully; 'but the music is at home. I had not
received it when I lent the others to Miss Belmaine, and it is only in
manuscript like the rest.'

'Could it not be sent for?' suggested an enthusiast who knew that
Ethelberta lived only in the next street, appealing by a look to her, and
then to the mistress of the house.

'Certainly, let us send for it,' said that lady. A footman was at once
quietly despatched with precise directions as to where Christopher's
sweet production might be found.

'What--is there going to be something interesting?' asked a young married
friend of Mrs. Napper, who had returned to her original spot.

'Yes--the best song she has written is to be sung in the best manner to
the best air that has been composed for it. I should not wonder if she
were going to sing it herself.'

'Did you know anything of Mrs. Petherwin until her name leaked out in
connection with these ballads?'

'No; but I think I recollect seeing her once before. She is one of those
people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a
little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows
her entirely. She was the orphan child of some clergyman, I believe.
Lady Petherwin, her