on. He says to himself, "It will do: I
feel it will do. Isn't it providential? Just when I was in despair!"
This is a more suitable sentiment for an organist, no doubt, for what
possible business can Dan Cupid have at St. Sylvester's? Louder and
louder yet pours the great stream of music; and that is a joke too, for
Lisle feels as if he were shouting his secret to the four winds, and yet
keeping it locked in his inmost soul, taking the passers-by into his
confidence in the most open-hearted fashion, and laughing at them in his
sleeve. But the musician is exhausted at last, and the end comes with a
thundering crash of chords.

"Here, boy--here's sixpence for you: you may be off. We've done enough
for to-day, and may go home to Bellevue street." But it seems to Bertie
Lisle, as he picks up his roll of music and comes down the aisle, that
Bellevue street too is only a joke now.

CHAPTER XLI.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A WAY.

April had come, and the best of the year was beginning with a yellow
dawn of daffodils. The trees stood stern and wintry, but there were
little leaves on the honeysuckles and the hawthorn hedges, glad
outbursts of song among the branches, and soft, shy caresses in the air.
Sissy Langton, riding into Fordborough, was delicately beautiful as
spring itself. She missed her squire of an earlier April, and his
absence made an underlying sadness in her radiant eyes which had the
April charm. That day her glance and smile had an especial brightness,
partly because spring had come, and, though countless springs have
passed away, each comes with the old yet ever-fresh assurance that it
will make all things new; partly because it was her birthday, and while
we are yet young there is a certain joy of royalty which marks our
birthday mornings; but most of all because that day gave her the power
to satisfy a desire which had lain hidden in her heart through the long
winter months.

It was the Fordborough market-day, and already, though it was but eleven
o'clock, the little town was waking up. Sissy, followed by Mrs.
Middleton's staid servant, rode straight to the principal street and
stopped at Mr. Hardwicke's office. Young Hardwicke, reading the paper in
his room, was surprised when a clerk announced that Miss Langton was at
the door asking for his father. He forgot the sporting intelligence in
an instant: "Well, isn't my father in?"

No: Mr. Hardwicke went out about twenty minutes earlier, and did not