rm--it seemed as though she must be
speaking loudly in order to drown it. But her pupil noticed nothing,
save that Miss Douglas was more quiet than usual, and perhaps more pale.
When she went away, she turned eastward, in order not to pass the house
a second time--the house that held Helen. But she need not have taken
the precaution; hers was not a figure upon which the eyes of Mrs.
Heathcote would be likely to dwell. In the city, unfashionable attire is
like the ring of Gyges, it renders the wearer, if not invisible, at
least unseen.

That night she could not sleep; she could do nothing but think of Helen,
Helen, her once dearly loved friend--Helen, his wife. She knew that she
must give up this new danger, and she knew also that she loved the
danger--these chances of a glimpse of Helen, Helen's home, and--yes, it
might be, at some future time, Helen's husband. But she conquered
herself again. In the morning she wrote a note to Cora's mother, saying
that she found herself unable to continue the lessons; as Cora had the
manuscript music-books which Dr. Douglas had himself prepared for his
daughter when she was a little girl on the island, she added that she
would come for them on Monday, and at the same time take leave of her
pupil, from whom she parted with regret.

Saturday and Sunday now intervened. At the choir rehearsal on Saturday a
foreboding came over her; occult malign influences seemed hovering in
the air. The tenor and organist, the opposition party, were ominously
affable. In this church there was, as in many another, an anomalous
"music committee," composed apparently of vestrymen, but in reality of
vestrymen's wives. These wives, spurred on secretly by the tenor and
organist, had decided that Miss Douglas was not the kind of soprano they
wished to have. She came into the city by train on the Sabbath day; she
was dressed so plainly and unfashionably that it betokened a want of
proper respect for the congregation; in addition, and in spite of this
plain attire, there was something about her which made "the gentlemen
turn and look at her." This last was the fatal accusation. Poor Anne
could not have disproved these charges, even if she had known what they
were; but she did not. Her foreboding of trouble had not been at fault
however, for on Monday morning came a formal note of dismissal, worded
with careful politeness; her services would not be required after the
following Sunday. It was a hard blow. But the