did on the violin,
your verses will be worth listening to, and I certainly shall not
laugh."

CHAPTER XXV

On the following day the somewhat curious religious conversation
between Arthur and Angela--a conversation which, begun on Arthur's
part out of curiosity, had ended on both sides very much in earnest--
the weather broke up and the grand old English climate reasserted its
treacherous supremacy. From summer weather the inhabitants of the
county of Marlshire suddenly found themselves plunged into a spell of
cold that was by contrast almost Arctic. Storms of sleet drove against
the window-panes, and there was even a very damaging night-frost,
while that dreadful scourge, which nobody in his senses except
Kingsley _can_ ever have liked, the east wind, literally pervaded the
whole place, and went whistling through the surrounding trees and
ruins in a way calculated to make even a Laplander shiver.

Under these cheerless circumstances our pair of companions--for as yet
they were, ostensibly at any rate, nothing more--gave up their outdoor
excursions and took to rambling over the disused rooms in the old
house, and hunting up many a record, some of them valuable and curious
enough, of long-forgotten Caresfoots, and even of the old priors
before them; a splendidly illuminated missal being amongst the latter
prizes. When this amusement was exhausted, they sat together over the
fire in the nursery, and Angela translated to him from her favourite
classical authors, especially Homer, with an ease and fluency of
expression that, to Arthur, was little short of miraculous. Or, when
they got tired of that, he read to her from standard writers, which,
elaborate as her education had been, in certain respects, she had
scarcely yet even opened, notably Shakespeare and Milton. Needless to
say, herself imbued with a strong poetic feeling, these immortal
writers were a source of intense delight to her.

"How is it that Mr. Fraser never gave you Shakespeare to read?" asked
Arthur one day, as he shut up the volume, having come to the end of
"Hamlet."

"He said that I should be better able to appreciate it when my mind
had been prepared to do so by the help of a classical and mathematical
education, and that it would be 'a mistake to cloy my mental palate
with sweets before I had learnt to appreciate their flavours.'"

"There is some sense in that," remarked Arthur. "By the way, how are
the verses you