into mischief. Catherine says he thought the world was getting
very wicked and dangerous and irreligious, and that it comforted him to
know that we should be out of it.'

Then she broke off suddenly.

'Do you know,' she went on wistfully, raising her beautiful eyes to her
companion, 'after all, he gave me my first violin?'

Langham smiled.

'I like that little inconsequence,' he said.

'Then of course I took to it, like a duck to water, and it began to
scare him that I loved it so much. He and Catherine only loved religion,
and us, and the poor. So he always took it away on Sundays. Then I hated
Sundays, and would never be good on them. One Sunday I cried myself
nearly into a fit on the dining-room floor because I mightn't have it.
Then he came in, and he took me up, and he tied a Scotch plaid round his
neck, and he put me into it, and carried me away right up on to the
hills, and he talked to me like an angel. He asked me not to make him
sad before God that he had given me that violin; so I never screamed
again--on Sundays!

Her companion's eyes were not quite as clear as before.

'Poor little naughty child' he said, bending over to her. 'I think your
father must have been a man to be loved.'

She looked at him, very near to weeping, her face all working with a
soft remorse.

'Oh, so he was--so he was! If he had been hard and ugly to us, why, it
would have been much easier for _me_; but he was so good! And there was
Catherine just like him, always preaching to us what he wished. You see
what a chain it's been--what a weight! And as I must struggle--_must_,
because I was I--to get back into the world on the other side of the
mountains, and do what all the dear wicked people there were doing, why,
I have been a criminal all my life! And _that_ isn't exhilarating
always.'

And she raised her arm and let it fall beside her with the quick
over-tragic emotion of nineteen.

'I wish your father could have heard you play as I heard you play
yesterday,' he said gently.

She started.

'_Did_ you hear me--that Wagner?'

He nodded, smiling. She still looked at him, her lips slightly open.

'Do you want to know what I thought? I have heard much music, you know.'

He laughed into her eyes, as much as to say, 'I am not quite the mummy
you thought me, after all!' And she coloured slightly.

'I have heard every violinist of any fame in Europe play, and play
often; and it seemed to me that with time--and work--you m