e presence of
death; and the Vicar, in his desperate attempts to talk, found his
voice chained without mercy to the slow foot of the dirge. He tried
to laugh.

"Really, this is too absurd--ha! ha! _Tum-tum-tibby-tum_." The
effort ended in ghastly failure. _Thrum-thrum-tiddy-thrum_ went the
Admiral's instrument.

Miss Limpenny grew desperate. "Sophia," she pleaded, "pray sing us
one of your cheerful ballads."

Sophia looked at Mr. Moggridge. He had always turned over the pages
for her so devotedly. Surely he would make some sign now. Alas! all
his eyes were for Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys.

"I will try," she assented with something dangerously like a sob.

She stepped to the "Collard" at a pace remorselessly timed to the
"Dead March," and chose her ballad--a trifle of Mr. Moggridge's
composition. It would reproach him more sharply than words, she
thought. A cloud of angry tears blurred her sight as she struck the
tinkling prelude.

"A month ago Lysander prayed To Jove,
to Cupid, and to Venus--"

_Thrum-thrum-thrum_ went the double bass next door. Mr. Moggridge
looked up. How thin and reedy Sophia's voice sounded to-night!
He had never thought so before.

"That he might die, if he betrayed
A single vow that passed between us."

"Sweetly touching!" murmured Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys.

Sophia pursued--

"O careless gods, to hear so ill,
And cheat the maid on you relying;
For false Lysander's thriving still,
And 'tis Corinna lies a-dying."

"Is that all?" asked Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys as Sophia with flushed
cheeks left the piano.

"That is all--a little effort not worth--"

"Oh, it is yours! But," with a sweet smile, "I ought to have
guessed. You must write a song for me one of these days."

"Do you sing?" cried the delighted Mr. Moggridge.

Sam, who had been waiting for a chance to speak, shouted across the
room--"I say, Miss Limpenny, Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys will sing if you ask
her."

After very little solicitation, and with none of the coyness common
to amateurs, she seated herself at the instrument, quietly pulled off
her gloves, and dashed without more ado into a rollicking Irish
ditty.

"Be aisy an' list to a chune
That's sung uv bowld Tim, the dragoon;
Sure, 'twas he'd niver miss
To be stalin' a kiss--
Or a brace--by the light uv the moon,
Aroon,
Wid a wink at the man in the moon!"

"Re