him--love of
ease, money, and position--seemed all to have vanished away. What
mattered it that to abandon Ethel Kenyon at the last moment would mean
disgrace and perhaps even beggary? He had no care left for thoughts like
these. If Lesley would acknowledge her love for him, he was ready to
throw all other considerations to the winds.

"Sing something, Lesley," her father said to her when the evening was
well advanced. "You have your music here?"

Oh, yes, Lesley had her music here. But she glanced a little nervously
in Oliver's direction. "I wonder if Ethel would accompany me," she said.
She shrank nervously from the thought of Oliver's accompaniments.

But Oliver was too quick for her. He moved forward to the piano as soon
as he saw Caspar Brooke's eye upon it. And with his hand on the
key-board, he addressed himself suavely to Lesley.

"You are going to sing, I hope? May I not have the pleasure of
accompanying you?"

Lesley could not say him nay, but she also could not help a glance, half
of alarm, half of appeal, towards her father. Mr. Brooke's face wore an
expression which was not often seen upon it at a social gathering. It
was distinctly stormy--there was a frown upon the brow, and an ominous
setting of the lips which more than one person in the room remarked.
"How savage Brooke looks!" one guest murmured into another's ear. "Isn't
he friendly with Trent?" And the words were remembered in after days.

But nothing could be said or done to hinder Oliver from taking his place
at the piano, for Lesley did not openly object, and her father could not
interfere between her and his own guest. So Lesley sang, and did not
sing so well as usual, for her heart failed her a little, partly through
vexation and partly through disappointment at Maurice Kenyon's
disappearance, but she gave pleasure to her hearers, in spite of what
seemed to herself a comparative failure, and when she had finished her
song, she was besieged by requests that she would sing once more.

"Sing 'Thine is my heart,'" Oliver's soft voice murmured in her ear.

"I have not that song here," said Lesley, quietly. She was not very much
discomposed now, but she did not want to encourage his attention. She
rose from the music-stool. "My music is downstairs," she said. "I must
go and fetch it--I have a new song that Ethel has promised to play for
me."

Oliver bit his lips and stood back as Lesley escaped by the door of the
front drawing-room. Mr. Bro