nce to be folding doors, you know--barbarous, wasn't it? Who _would_
use doors when curtains could be had?"

"Doors are useful sometimes," said Sydney. But he was not in the least
attentive either to her words or to his own: he was looking towards the
alcove.

Miss Pynsent--the young woman with sandy locks and freckled face, on
which a broad, good-humored smile was beaming--was already seated at the
piano and turning over her music. Presently she began to play, and
Sydney, little as was his technical knowledge of the art, acknowledged
at once that he had been mistaken, and that Miss Pynsent, in spite of
being an heiress, played remarkably well. But the notes were apparently
those of an accompaniment only--was she going to sing? Evidently not,
for at that moment another figure slipped forward from the shadows of
the inner drawing-room, and faced the audience.

This was a girl who did not look more than eighteen or nineteen: a
slight fragile creature in white, with masses of dusky hair piled high
above a delicate, pallid, yet unmistakably beautiful, face. The large
dark eyes, the curved, sensitive mouth, the exquisite modelling of the
features, the graceful lines of the slightly undeveloped figure, the
charming pose of head and neck, the slender wrist bent round the violin
which she held, formed a picture of almost ideal loveliness. Sydney
could hardly refrain from an exclamation of surprise and admiration. He
piqued himself on knowing a little about everything that was worth
knowing, and he had a considerable acquaintance with art, so that the
first thing which occurred to him was to seek for a parallel to the
figure before him in the pictures with which he was acquainted. She was
not unlike a Sir Joshua, he decided; and yet--in the refinement of every
feature, and a certain sweetness and tranquillity of expression--she
reminded him of a Donatello that he had seen in one of his later visits
to Florence or Sienna. He had always thought that if he were ever rich
he would buy pictures; and he wondered idly whether money would buy the
Donatello of which the white-robed violin-player reminded him.

One or two preliminary tuning notes were sounded, and then the violinist
began to play. Her skill was undoubted, but the feeling and pathos which
she threw into the long-drawn sighing notes were more remarkable even
than her skill. There was a touch of genius in her performance which
held the listeners enthralled. When she had f