and were badly pampered standing so long in their stalls, and
that I was really afraid they would break her neck, as she was not
strong enough to manage them; but she laughed, and answered that if
they did, it would be the best day's work they had ever accomplished,
and she would give them a chance. Down the beach they went like a
flash, and when she came home their flanks smoked like a lime-kiln.
What is ever to be done with my mistress, I am sure I don't know. She
makes the house so doleful, that nobody wants to stay here, and only
yesterday Katie and Phoebe, the cook, gave notice that they wished to
leave when the month was out. She has no idea what she will do, or
where she will go. We have wanted a hot-house, and she ordered me to
get the builder's estimate of the cost of two plans which she drew;
but when I carried them to her, she pushed them aside, and said she
would think of the matter, but thought she might leave this place, and
therefore would not need the building. She is as notionate as a child;
and no one but my poor mother could ever manage her. Hist! sir! Don't
you hear her? You may be sure there is mischief brewing when she sings
like that."

Dr. Grey walked towards the house, and paused on the portico to
listen,--

"Quis est homo, qui non fleret
Christi matrem si videret,
In tanto supplicio."

The voice was not so strong as when he had heard it in _Addio del
Passata_, but the solemn mournfulness of its cadences was better
suited to the _Stabat Mater_, and indexed much that no other method of
expression would have reached. After some moments she forsook Rossini,
and began the _Agnus Dei_ from Haydn's Third Mass,--

"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere."

Surely she could not render this grand strain if her soul was in
fierce rebellion; and, with strained ears and hushed breath, Dr. Grey
listened to the closing

"Dona nobis pacem,--pacem,--pacem."

It was a passionate, wailing prayer, and the only one that ever
crossed her lips, yet his heart throbbed with pleasure, as he noted
the tremor that seemed to shiver her voice into silvery fragments; and
as she ended, he knew that tears were not far from her eyes.

When he entered the room, she had left the piano, and wheeled a sofa
in front of the grate, where she sat gazing, vacantly into the fiery
fretwork of glowing coals.

A copy of Turner's "Liber Studiorum," superbly bound in purple velvet,
lay on her knee, and into a cor