rticulate but easily translatable protest on the part of the weaker
person involved.

Then came an instant's silence, a man's ringing laugh of triumph; next,
in a girl's voice, a little breathless but of a quality to make the
listener prick up ears already alert, these most unexpected words:

"'O, it is _excellent_
To have a giant's strength; but it is _tyrannous_
To use it like a giant!'"

"Is it, indeed, Miss Arrogance?" mocked the deeper voice. "Well, if you
had given it back at once, as all laws of justice, not to mention
propriety, demanded, I should not have had to force it away from you.
Oh, I say, did I really hurt that wrist, or are you shamming?"

"Shamming! You big boys have no idea how brutally violent you are when
you want some little thing you ought not to have. It aches like
anything," retorted the other voice, its very complaints uttered in such
melodious tones of contralto music that the listener found himself
wishing with all his might to know if the face of its owner could by any
possibility match the loveliness of her voice. Dark, he fancied she must
be, and young, and strong--of education, of a gay wit, yet of a
temper--all this the listener thought he could read in the voice.

"Poor little wilful girl! Did she get hurt, then, trying to have her own
way? Come in here, jade, and I'll fix it up for you," the deeper tones
declared.

Footsteps again; a door closed. Silence succeeded for a minute; then the
Schumann music began again, a violin accompanying. And suddenly,
directly opposite the settee, a door swung slowly open, the hand upon
the knob invisible. A picture was presented to the stranger's eyes as if
somebody had meant to show it to him. He could but look. Anybody, seeing
the picture, would have looked and found it hard to turn his eyes away.

For it was the heart of the house, right here, so close at hand that
even a stranger could catch a glimpse of it by chance. A great,
wide-throated fireplace held a splendid fire of burning logs, the light
from it illumining the whole room, otherwise dark in the October
twilight. Before it on the hearth-rug were silhouetted, in distinct
lines against its rich background, two figures. One was that of a woman
in warm middle life, sitting in a big chair, her face full of both
brightness and peace; at her feet knelt a young girl, her arm upon her
mother's knees, her face uplifted. The two faces were smiling into each
other.

Somebody--it looked to be