trusively, he reached out and took
her hand in his warm grasp.

Why did you promise love to me
And not that promise keep?
Why did you swear mine eyes were bright,
Yet leave those eyes to weep?
Why did you say my face was fair,
And yet that face forsake?
How could you win my virgin heart,
Yet leave that heart to break?

I am sure there is no lovelier and more touching ballad in all our
English treasury than that sad, simple, and most beautiful old song.
And he had set it to an air as simple and as perfect as its own
words, an old-world air that suited it and his rich and flexible
voice.

"Why, Jelnik!" exclaimed Doctor Geddes, in a voice of pure
astonishment, "I knew you could tinkle out a tune on a piano, but,
man, I didn't dream it was in you to sing like this!" And he stared
at his cousin.

"I'd make bold to swear that Mr. Jelnik has a dozen more surprises
up his sleeve, if he chose to let us see them," The Author said
pleasantly.

"My father's system of education included music. For which I praise
him in the gates," Mr. Jelnik replied casually.

"'Tinkle out a tune on a piano'!" breathed Alicia, and cast a look
of deep disdain upon the blundering doctor. "Why, I've never in all
my life heard anybody sing like that!"

But I saw him through a mist, and felt my heart ache and burn in my
breast, and wondered what he was doing here in my house that might
have been his house, and how I was going to walk through my life
after he had gone out of it.

I had a wild desire to run outside into the dark night and the
hushed garden, away from everybody and weep and weep, despairingly.
Because a veil had been torn from my eyes this night, and I knew
that the cruellest thing that can happen to a woman had happened to
me. There could be but one thing more bitter--that he or anybody
else in the world should know it.

So I sat there, dumb, while everybody else said pleasant things to
him, their voices sounding afar, far off.

After a while we went into the living-room where our new piano is,
and he played for us--Hungarian things, I think. Then he drifted
into Chopin, and Alicia stood by and turned his music for him.

"Those two," whispered Miss Emmeline, "are the most idyllic figures
I have ever seen." I think she sighed as she said it. "Youth is the
most beautiful thing in the world," she added.

The Westmacotes, weary after a