life won't be very bright."

"Perhaps she will make it brighter," said Thorne. "What is she like? Is
she pretty?"

"Yes," said Bertie.

Judith smiled: "One has to qualify all one's adjectives for her. She is
nice-ish, pretty-ish: I doubt if she is as much as clever-ish."

"No need for her to be any more," Bertie remarked. "Didn't Miss Crawford
say she would come in for a lot of money--some of her mother's--when she
was one-and-twenty?"

"Yes, five or six hundred a year."

"That's why he has kept her at school, I suppose--afraid she should take
up with a curate, very likely."

"Mr. Nash is very rich too, and she is an only child," said Judith,
ignoring Bertie's remark. "But I think it has been hard on Emmeline."

"Well, I'm sorry she is going," said Lisle--"_very_ sorry."

"Is she such a promising pupil?" Thorne inquired.

"She's a nice girl," said Bertie, "but a promising pupil--O Lord!" He
flew to the piano, played an air in a singularly wooden manner, and then
dragged it languidly, yet laboriously, up and down the keys.
"Variations, you perceive." After a little more of this treatment the
unfortunate melody grew very lame indeed, and finally died of
exhaustion. "That's Miss Emmeline Nash," said Bertie, spinning round on
the music-stool and confronting Percival.

"It is very like Emmeline's style of playing," Judith owned.

"Of course it is. Let's have something else for a change." And turning
back to the piano, he began to sing. Then he called Judith to come and
take her turn. She sang well, and Percival, by the fireside, noted the
young fellow's evident pride in her performance, and admired the pair.
(Any one else might have admired the three, for Thorne's grave,
foreign-looking face was just the fitting contrast to the Lisles' fair,
clear features. The morbid depression of a couple of months earlier had
passed, and left him far more like the Percival of Brackenhill. Poverty
surrounded the friends and dulled their lives, but as yet it was only a
burden, not a blight.)

"You sing," said Bertie, looking back. "I remember you were great at
some of those old songs. I'll play for you: what shall it be?"

"I'm sure I hardly know," said Percival, coming forward.

"Let's have 'Shall I, wasting in despair,'" Lisle suggested. "It has
been going in my head all this morning." He played a few notes.

"No, no!" the other exclaimed hurriedly--"not that." Too well he
remembered the tender devotion of more than a y