you are, I am sure my youngest daughter's playing, will please you.'

Catherine moved abruptly. Robert, while he made some pleasant
answer, divined that the reserved and stately daughter must be often
troubled by the mother's expansiveness.

Meanwhile the room was again settling itself to, listen. Mrs.
Seaton was severely turning over a photograph book. In her opinion
the violin was an unbecoming instrument for young women. Miss Barks
sat upright with the studiously neutral expression which befits the
artist asked to listen to a rival. Mr. Thornburgh sat pensive, one
foot drooped over the other. He was very fond of the Leyburn girls,
but music seemed to him, good man, one of the least comprehensible
of human pleasures. As for Rose, she had at last arranged herself
and her accompanist Agnes, after routing out from her music a couple
of _Fantasie-Stuecke_, which she had wickedly chosen as presenting
the most severely classical contrast to the 'rubbish' played by the
preceding performers. She stood with her lithe figure in its
old-fashioned dress thrown out against the black coats of a group
of gentlemen beyond, one slim arched foot advanced, the ends of the
blue sash dangling, the hand and arm, beautifully formed but still
wanting the roundness of womanhood, raised high for action, the
lightly poised head thrown back with an air. Robert thought her a
bewitching, half-grown thing, overflowing with potentialities of
future brilliance and empire.

Her music astonished him. Where had a little provincial maiden
learned to play with this intelligence, this force, this delicate
command of her instrument? He was not a musician, and therefore
could not gauge her exactly, but he was more or less familiar with