every table. There were screens, cushions, pen-wipers.
Bertie calculated that Miss Crawford's drawing-room might yield several
quarts of beads. He had seen all these things many times, but they had
acquired a new meaning and interest that day.

Miss Macdonald appeared, and Miss Crawford seated herself on a pink rose,
about the size of a Jersey cabbage, with two colossal buds, and rested her
tired back against a similar group. At the first notes of the piano her
watchful and smiling face relaxed and she nodded wearily in the
background. It did not matter much. The young master was grave, silent,
patient, conscientious. In fact, it did not matter at all. Having slept
through the earlier lessons, the schoolmistress might well sleep through
this. It was rather a pity that, instead of taking a placid and unbroken
rest on the sofa, she sat stiffly on a worked chair and started into
uneasy wakefulness between the lessons, dismissing one girl and sending
for the next with infinite politeness and propriety. At last she said,
"And will you have the kindness to tell Miss Nash?"

Bertie sat turning over a piece of music till the sound of the opening
door told him that his pupil had arrived. Then he rose and looked in her
direction, but avoided her eyes.

There was no school-girl slovenliness about Emmeline Nash. Her gray dress
was fresh and neat, a tiny bunch of spring flowers was fastened in it, a
ribbon of delicate blue was round her neck. As she came forward with a
slight flush on her cheek, her head carried defiantly and the sunlight
shining on her pale hair, Miss Crawford said to herself that really she
was a stylish girl, ladylike and pretty. Her schoolfellows declared that
Emmeline always went about with her mouth hanging open. But that day the
parted lips had an innocent expression of wonder and expectation.

The lesson was begun in as business-like a fashion as the others. Perhaps
Emmeline regaled the young master with a few more false notes than usual,
but she was curiously intent on the page before her. Presently she stole a
glance over her shoulder at Miss Crawford. She was asleep. Emmeline played
a few bars mechanically, and then she turned to Bertie.

The eyes which met her own had an anxious, tender, almost reverential,
expression. This slim fair girl had suddenly become a very wonderful
being to Lisle, and he touched her hand with delicate respect and looked
strangely at her pretty vacant face.

Had there been