The music-room was a lofty and spacious apartment done completely in
hard-woods; its panelled walls and ceiling rang with a magnificent
sonority as the two pairs of feet moved across the mirror-like marquetry
of the floor.

To one side stood a concert-grand; its case was so unique and so
luxurious that even Jane was conscious of its having been made by special
order and from a special design. Close at hand stood a tall music-stand
in style to correspond. It was laden with handsomely bound scores of all
the German classics and the usual operas of the French and Italian
schools. These were all ranged in precise order; nothing there seemed to
have been disturbed for a year past. "My! isn't it grand!" sighed Jane.
She already felt herself succumbing beneath these accumulated splendors.

Mrs. Bates carelessly seated herself on the piano-stool, with her back to
the instrument. "I don't suppose," she observed, casually, "that I have
sat down here for a month."

"What!" cried Jane, with a stare. "If I had such a lovely room as this I
should play in it every day."

"Dear me," rejoined Mrs. Bates, "what pleasure could I get from
practising in this great barn of a place, that isn't half full until
you've got seventy or eighty people in it? Or on this big sprawling
thing?"--thrusting out her elbow backward towards the shimmering cover of
the key-board.

"So then," said Jane to herself, "it's all for show. I knew it was. I
don't believe she can play a single note."