asleep with it on her pillow,
and all her pretty curls lying over the strings. I dare say poor man, it
was one of the acts toward his children that tormented his mind in his
last hour.'

'She has certainly had her way about practising it; she plays superbly.'

'Oh, yes, she has had her way. She is a queer mixture, is Rose. I see
a touch of the old Leyburn recklessness in her; and then there is the
beauty and refinement of bar mother's side of the family. Lately she has
got quite out of hand. She went to stay with some relations they have
in Manchester, got drawn into a musical set there, took to these funny
gowns, and now she and Catherine are, always half at war. Poor Catherine
said to me the other day, with tears, in her eyes, that she knew Rose
thought her as hard as iron. "But I promised papa." She makes herself
miserable and it's no use. I wish the little wild thing would get
herself well married. She's not meant for this humdrum place and she may
kick over the traces.'

'She's pretty enough for anything and anybody,' said Robert.

The vicar looked at him sharply, but the young man's critical and
meditative look reassured him.

The next day, just before early dinner, Rose and Agnes, who had been for
a walk, were startled, as they were turning into their own gate, by the
frantic waving of a white handkerchief from the Vicarage garden. It was
Mrs. Thornburgh's accepted way of calling the attention of the Burwood
inmates, and the girls walked on. They found the good lady waiting for
them in the drive in a characteristic glow and flutter.

'My dears, I have been looking out for you all the morning! I should
have come over but for the stores coming, and a tiresome man from
Randall's--I've had to bargain with him for a whole hour about taking
back those sweets. I was swindled, of course, but we should have died if
we'd had to eat them up. Well, now, my dears--'

The vicar's wife paused. Her square, short figure was between the two
girls; she had an arm of each, and she looked significantly, from one to
another, her gray curls, flapping across her face as she did so.

'Go on, Mrs. Thornburgh,' cried Rose. 'You make us quite nervous.'

'How do ypu like Mr. Elsmere?' she inquired, solemnly.

'Very much,' said both, in chorus.

Mrs. Thornburgh surveyed Rose's smiling frankness with a little sigh.
Things were going grandly, but she could imagine a disposition of
affairs which would have given her personally more p