ome old family ditties, that in
years gone by had been played and sung by her mother, Elfride sat down
to the pianoforte, and began, ''Twas on the evening of a winter's day,'
in a pretty contralto voice.

'Do you like that old thing, Mr. Smith?' she said at the end.

'Yes, I do much,' said Stephen--words he would have uttered, and
sincerely, to anything on earth, from glee to requiem, that she might
have chosen.

'You shall have a little one by De Leyre, that was given me by a young
French lady who was staying at Endelstow House:

'"Je l'ai plante, je l'ai vu naitre,
Ce beau rosier ou les oiseaux," &c.;

and then I shall want to give you my own favourite for the very last,
Shelley's "When the lamp is shattered," as set to music by my poor
mother. I so much like singing to anybody who REALLY cares to hear me.'

Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually
recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene,
which seems ordained to be her special form of manifestation throughout
the pages of his memory. As the patron Saint has her attitude and
accessories in mediaeval illumination, so the sweetheart may be said to
have hers upon the table of her true Love's fancy, without which she is
rarely introduced there except by effort; and this though she may, on
further acquaintance, have been observed in many other phases which one
would imagine to be far more appropriate to love's young dream.

Miss Elfride's image chose the form in which she was beheld during
these minutes of singing, for her permanent attitude of visitation to
Stephen's eyes during his sleeping and waking hours in after days.
The profile is seen of a young woman in a pale gray silk dress with
trimmings of swan's-down, and opening up from a point in front, like a
waistcoat without a shirt; the cool colour contrasting admirably with
the warm bloom of her neck and face. The furthermost candle on the piano
comes immediately in a line with her head, and half invisible itself,
forms the accidentally frizzled hair into a nebulous haze of light,
surrounding her crown like an aureola. Her hands are in their place on
the keys, her lips parted, and trilling forth, in a tender diminuendo,
the closing words of the sad apostrophe:

'O Love, who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier!'

Her head is forward a little, and he