settled when I was a child. Music is my life. But if I took it
for a profession, she made me promise to see some other kinds of life
first. She often said she would like me to go to Oxford. She had some
old engravings of the colleges she used to show me. I am not a pauper,
you see,--not at all. My family was once a very great family; and I have
some money--not very much, but enough. So then Mr. Sorell and I began to
talk. And I had suddenly the feeling--'If this man will tell me what to
do, I will do it.' And then he found I was thinking of Oxford, and he
said, if I came, he would be my friend, and look after me. And so he
advised me to go to Marmion, because some of the tutors there were great
friends of his. And that is why I went. And I have been there nearly
a year."

"And you like it?" Connie, sitting hunched on the music-stool, her chin
on her hand, was thinking of Falloden's outburst, and her own rebuff in
Lathom Woods.

The boy shrugged his shoulders. He looked at Connie with his brilliant
eyes, and she seemed to see that he was on the point of confiding in
her, of complaining of his treatment, and then proudly checked himself.

"Oh, I like it well enough," he said carelessly. "I am reading classics.
I love Greek. There is a soul in Greek. Latin--and Rome--that is too
like the Germans! Now let me play to you--something from Poland."

He took her seat at the piano, and began to play--first in a dreamy and
quiet way, passing from one plaintive folk-song to another; then
gradually rising into passion, defiance, tragedy. Constance stood
listening to him in amazement--entranced. Music was a natural language
to her as it was to Radowitz, though her gift was so small and slight
compared to his. But she understood and followed him; and there sprang
up in her, as she sat turning her delicate face to the musician, that
sudden, impassioned delight, that sense of fellowship with things vast
and incommunicable--"exultations, agonies, and love, and man's
unconquerable mind"--which it is the glorious function of music to
kindle in the human spirit.

[Illustration: _Lady Connie had stood entranced by the playing of
Radowitz_]

The twilight darkened. Every sound in the room but Radowitz's playing
had ceased; even Mrs. Hooper had put down her newspaper. Nora, on the
further side of the room, was absorbed in watching the two beautiful
figures under the lamplight, the golden-haired musician and the
listening girl.

Suddenl