r all, sounding
slow, calm, and significant, the marvellous chime, the message which
Morningquest heard hourly year by year, and heeded no more than it
heeded death at a distance or political complications in Peru.

The same party met again at Ilverthorpe, but there were others there
as well--Ideala, Mrs. Kilroy's father and mother Mr. and Lady Adeline
Hamilton-Wells, and Lady Galbraith, but not Sir George.

In the drawing-room after dinner, Beth was intent upon a portfolio of
drawings, and Ideala, seeing her alone, went up to her.

"Are you fond of pictures?" she said to Beth.

"Yes, that is just the word," Beth answered. "I am so 'fond' of them
that even such a collection as this, which shows great industry rather
than great art, I find full of interest, and delight in. Happy for me,
perhaps, that I don't know anything about technique. Subject appeals
to my imagination as it used to do when I was a child, and loved to
linger over the pictures on old-fashioned pieces of music. Those
pictures lure me still with strange sensations such as no others make
me feel. I wish I could realise now as vividly as I realised then the
beauty of that lovely lady on the song, and the whole pathetic
story--the gem that decked her queenly brow and bound her raven hair,
remained a sad memorial of blighted love's despair; and that other
young creature who wore a wreath of roses on the night when first we
met; and the one who related that we met, 'twas in a crowd, and I
thought he would shun me; he came, I could not breathe, for his eye
was upon me, and concluded that 'twas thou that had caused me this
anguish, my mother. There was the gallant corsair, too, just stepping
out of a boat, waving his hat. His curly hair, open shirt collar, and
black tie with flying ends remain in my mind, intimately associated
with Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire
night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling
with frosty brightness--impressions I would not exchange for art
understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the
greatest work of art in the world--so strangely am I blunted."

"What, already!" Ideala said compassionately. "But that is only a
phase. You will come out of it, and be young again and feel strongly,
which is better than knowing, I concede. The truest appreciation of a
work of art does not take place in the head, but in the heart; not in
thinking, but in feeling. When we stand b