hade of the yews, with the
garden-house behind to make the voice sound better than it is!"

Mr. Buxton made a complimentary murmur.

"Thank you," she said, "Master Anthony, you are wool-gathering."

"Indeed not," he said, "but I was thinking where I had seen a lute. Ah!
it is in the little west parlour."

"A lute!" cried Mary. "Ah! but I have no music; and I have not the
courage to sing the only song I know, over and over again."

"But there is music too," said Anthony.

Mary clapped her hands.

"When dinner is over," she said, "you and I will go to find it."

Dinner was over at last, and the four rose.

"Come," said Mary; while Isabel turned into the garden and Mr. Buxton
went to his room. "We will be with you presently," she cried after
Isabel.

Then the two went together to the little west parlour, oak-panelled, with
a wide fireplace with the logs in their places, and the latticed windows
with their bottle-end glass, looking upon the walled garden. Anthony
stood on a chair and opened the top window, letting a flood of summer
noises into the room.

They found the lute music, written over its six lines with the queer F's
and double F's and numerals--all Hebrew to Anthony, but bursting and
blossoming with delicate melodies to Mary's eyes. Then she took up the
lute, and tuned it on her knee, still sitting in a deep lounging-chair,
with her buckled feet before her; while Anthony sat opposite and watched
her supple flashing fingers busy among the strings, and her grave
abstracted look as she listened critically. Then she sounded the strings
in little rippling chords.

"Ah! it is a sweet old lute," she said. "Put the music before me."

Anthony propped it on a chair.

"Is that the right side up?" he asked.

Mary smiled and nodded, still looking at the music.

"Now then," she said, and began the prelude.

* * * *

Anthony threw himself back in his chair as the delicate tinkling began to
pour out and overscore the soft cooing of a pigeon on the roofs somewhere
and the murmur of bees through the open window. It was an old precise
little love-song from Italy, with a long prelude, suggesting by its
tender minor chords true and restrained love, not passionate but tender,
not despairing but melancholy; it was a love that had for its symbols not
the rose and the lily, but the lavender and thyme--acrid in its
sweetness. The prelude had climbed up by melodious steps t