h against her will, into taking a singing
class at the school, closed the school door behind her with a sigh of
relief, and tripped up the road to Burwood.

'How abominably they sang this morning!' she said to herself with
curving lip. 'Talk of the natural north-country gift for music! What
ridiculous fictions people set up! Dear me, what clouds! Perhaps we
shan't get our walk to Shanmoor after all, and if we don't, and
if--if--' her cheek flushed with a sudden excitement--'if Mr. Elsmere
doesn't propose, Mrs. Thornburgh will be unmanageable. It is all Agnes
and I can do to keep her in bounds as it is, and if _something_ doesn't
come off to-day, she'll be for reversing the usual proceeding, and
asking _Catherine_ her intentions, which would ruin everything.'

Then raising her head she swept her eyes round the sky. The wind was
freshening, the clouds were coming up fast from the westward; over the
summit of High Fell and the crags on either side, a gray straight-edged
curtain was already lowering.

'It will hold up yet awhile,' she thought, 'and if it rains later we can
get a carriage at Shanmoor and come back by the road.'

And she walked on homewards meditating, her thin fingers clasped before
her, the wind blowing her skirts, the blue ribbons on her hat, the
little gold curls on her temples, in a pretty many-coloured turmoil
about her. When she got to Burwood she shut herself into the room which
was peculiarly hers, the room which had been a stable. Now it was full
of artistic odds and ends--her fiddle, of course, and piles of music,
her violin stand, a few deal tables and cane chairs beautified by a
number of _chiffons_, bits of Liberty stuffs with the edges still
ragged, or cheap morsels of Syrian embroidery. On the tables stood
photographs of musicians and friends--the spoils of her visits to
Manchester, and of two visits to London which gleamed like golden points
in the girl's memory. The plastered walls were covered with an odd
medley. Here was a round mirror, of which Rose was enormously proud. She
had extracted it from a farmhouse of the neighbourhood, and paid for it
with her own money. There a group of unfinished headlong sketches of the
most fiercely impressionist description--the work and the gift of a knot
of Manchester artists, who had feted and flattered the beautiful little
Westmoreland girl, when she was staying among them, to her heart's
content. Manchester, almost alone among our great towns of th