her head.

She was answered by the first notes of the flute, following some
powerful chords in which Miss Barks had tested at once the strength
of her wrists and the vicarage piano.

The girl made a little _moue_ of disgust, and turned as though to
fly down the steps again. But Agnes caught her and held her, and
the mutinous creature had to submit to be drawn inside while Mrs.
Thornburgh, in obedience to complaints of draughts from Mrs. Seaton,
motioned to have the window shut. Rose established herself against
the wall, her curly head thrown back, her eyes half shut, her mouth
expressing an angry endurance. Robert watched her with amusement.

It was certainly a remarkable duet. After an _adagio_ opening in
which flute and piano were at magnificent cross purposes from the
beginning, the two instruments plunged into an _allegro_ very long
and very fast, which became ultimately a desperate race between the
competing performers for the final chord. Mr. Mayhew toiled away,
taxing the resources of his whole vast frame to keep his small
instrument in a line with the piano, and taxing them in vain. For
the shriller and the wilder grew the flute, and the greater the
exertion of the dark Hercules performing on it, the fiercer grew
the pace of the piano. Rose stamped her little foot.

'Two bars ahead last page,' she murmured, 'three bars this; will
no one stop her!'

But the pages flew past, turned assiduously by Agnes, who took a
sardonic delight in these performances, and every countenance in