ed perhaps for the first time
now that she was gone, and he, before the fire, was brooding over her
departure and the past. Not likely that one of his decisive type, whose
life had so long been bound up with swords and horses, would grasp what
music might mean to a little girl. Such ones, he knew, required to be
taught scales, and "In a Cottage near a Wood" with other melodies. He
took care not to go within sound of them, so that he had no conception of
the avidity with which Gyp had mopped up all, and more than all, her
governess could teach her. He was blind to the rapture with which she
listened to any stray music that came its way to Mildenham--to carols in
the Christmas dark, to certain hymns, and one special "Nunc Dimittis" in
the village church, attended with a hopeless regularity; to the horn of
the hunter far out in the quivering, dripping coverts; even to Markey's
whistling, which was full and strangely sweet.

He could share her love of dogs and horses, take an anxious interest in
her way of catching bumblebees in the hollow of her hand and putting them
to her small, delicate ears to hear them buzz, sympathize with her
continual ravages among the flowerbeds, in the old-fashioned garden, full
of lilacs and laburnums in spring, pinks, roses, cornflowers in summer,
dahlias and sunflowers in autumn, and always a little neglected and
overgrown, a little squeezed in, and elbowed by the more important
surrounding paddocks. He could sympathize with her attempts to draw his
attention to the song of birds; but it was simply not in him to
understand how she loved and craved for music. She was a cloudy little
creature, up and down in mood--rather like a brown lady spaniel that she
had, now gay as a butterfly, now brooding as night. Any touch of
harshness she took to heart fearfully. She was the strangest compound of
pride and sell-disparagement; the qualities seemed mixed in her so deeply
that neither she nor any one knew of which her cloudy fits were the
result. Being so sensitive, she "fancied" things terribly. Things that
others did to her, and thought nothing of, often seemed to her conclusive
evidence that she was not loved by anybody, which was dreadfully unjust,
because she wanted to love everyone--nearly. Then suddenly she would
feel: "If they don't love me, I don't care. I don't want anything of
anybody!" Presently, all would blow away just like a cloud, and she
would love and be gay, until something