ention of interfering, Harvey,' she said, with
her distant smile. 'For the next few months I shall be very busy
indeed. Only one thing I would ask--you don't think of leaving this
house before midsummer?'

'No.'

'Because I shall probably give my recital in May, and it would be
rather inconvenient----'

'Everything shall be arranged to suit you.'

'Not at all, not at all!' she exclaimed cheerfully. 'I don't ask so
much as that; it would be unreasonable. We are neither of us to stand
in the other's way--isn't that the agreement? Tell me your plans, and
you shall know mine, and I'm sure everything will be managed very well.'

So the conversation ended, satisfactorily to neither. Harvey, aware of
having spoken indiscreetly, felt that he was still more to blame for
allowing his wife a freedom of which she threatened to make absurd use;
and Alma, her feelings both as wife and mother sensibly perturbed,
resented the imputation which seemed to have been thrown upon her
conduct. This resentment was of course none the less enduring because
conscience took her husband's side. She remembered her appointment
tomorrow (practically an appointment) with Cyrus Redgrave at the
Crystal Palace; would not that be more difficult to confess than
anything she could reasonably suppose to have happened between Harvey
and Mary Abbott? Yet more than ever she hoped to meet Redgrave, to hold
him by a new link of illusory temptation, that he might exert himself
to the utmost in promoting her success. For among the impulses which
urged her forward, her reasons for desiring a public triumph, was one
which Harvey perhaps never for a moment imagined--a desire to shine
gloriously in the eyes of her husband. Harvey would never do her
justice until constrained by the voice of the world. Year after year he
held her in less esteem; he had as good as said that he did not think
her capable of taking a place among professional violinists. Disguise
it how he might, he secretly wished her to become a mere domestic
creature, to abandon hopes that were nothing better than a proof of
vanity. This went to Alma's heart, and rankled there. He should see! He
should confess his error, in all its injurious and humiliating extent!
At whatever cost--at all _but_ any cost--the day of her triumph should
come about! Foreseeing it, she had less difficulty in keeping calm when
the excellencies of Mrs. Abbott were vaunted before her, when Harvey
simply ignored all that in h