es in hand. She scarcely looked up even when Miriam lifted her voice
to show their benefactor what she could do. These tragic or pathetic
notes all went out of the window and mingled with the undecipherable
concert of Paris, so that no neighbour was disturbed by them. The girl
shrieked and wailed when the occasion required it, and Mrs. Rooth only
turned her page, showing in this way a great esthetic as well as a great
personal trust.

She rather annoyed their visitor by the serenity of her confidence--for
a reason he fully understood only later--save when Miriam caught an
effect or a tone so well that she made him in the pleasure of it forget
her parent's contiguity. He continued to object to the girl's English,
with its foreign patches that might pass in prose but were offensive in
the recitation of verse, and he wanted to know why she couldn't speak
like her mother. He had justly to acknowledge the charm of Mrs. Rooth's
voice and tone, which gave a richness even to the foolish things she
said. They were of an excellent insular tradition, full both of natural
and of cultivated sweetness, and they puzzled him when other indications
seemed to betray her--to refer her to more common air. They were like
the reverberation of some far-off tutored circle.

The connexion between the development of Miriam's genius and the
necessity of an occasional excursion to the country--the charming
country that lies in so many directions beyond the Parisian
_banlieue_--would not have been immediately apparent to a superficial
observer; but a day, and then another, at Versailles, a day at
Fontainebleau and a trip, particularly harmonious and happy, to
Rambouillet, took their places in our young man's plan as a part of the
indirect but contributive culture, an agency in the formation of taste.
Intimations of the grand manner for instance would proceed in abundance
from the symmetrical palace and gardens of Louis XIV. Peter "adored"
Versailles and wandered there more than once with the ladies of the
Hotel de la Garonne. They chose quiet hours, when the fountains were
dry; and Mrs. Rooth took an armful of novels and sat on a bench in the
park, flanked by clipped hedges and old statues, while her young
companions strolled away, walked to the Trianon, explored the long,
straight vistas of the woods. Rambouillet was vague and vivid and sweet;
they felt that they found a hundred wise voices there; and indeed there
was an old white chateau which c