appear to him when he
had such grand harmonies at his fingers' ends. But he soon stopped; and
when I was about to tell him how I appreciated his performance, he said,
'What an abominable instrument a bad organ is!' I had thought it
beautiful, of course. I asked him what he had been playing. I said was
it not by Mozart; and then I saw his eyebrows go up; so I added, as a
saving clause, that perhaps it was something of his own. 'My dear girl,'
said he, 'it was only an _entr'acte_ from an opera of Donizetti's.' He
was carrying my shawl at the time; and he wrapped it about my shoulders
in the tenderest manner as he said this, and made love to me all the
evening to console me. In his opinion, the greatest misfortune that can
happen anyone is to make a fool of oneself; and whenever I do it, he
pets me in the most delicate manner, as if I were a child who had just
got a tumble. When we settled down here and got the organ, he began to
play constantly, and I used to practise the piano in the daytime so as
to have duets with him. But though he was always ready to play whenever
I proposed it, he was quite different then from what he was when he
played by himself. He was all eyes and ears, and the moment I played a
wrong note he would name the right one. Then I generally got worse and
stopped. He never lost his patience or complained; but I used to feel
that he was urging me on, or pulling me back, or striving to get me to
do something which I could not grasp. Then he would give me up in
despair, and play on mechanically from the notes before him, thinking of
something else all the time. I practised harder, and tried again. I
thought at first I had succeeded; because our duets went so smoothly and
we were always so perfectly together. But I discovered--by instinct I
believe--that instead of having a musical treat, he was only trying to
please me. He thought I liked playing duets with him; and accordingly he
used to sit down beside me and accompany me faithfully, no matter how I
chose to play."

"Dear me! Why doesnt he get Rubinstein to play with him, since he is so
remarkably fastidious?"

"It is not so much mechanical skill that I lack; but there is
something--I cannot tell what it is. I found it out one night when we
were at Mrs. Saunders's. She is an incurable flirt; and she was quite
sure that she had captivated Ned, who is always ready to make love to
anyone that will listen to him."

"A nice sort of man to be married to!"