a tune?"
DANTE ROSSETTI.

On the morning of the twenty-fifth of May, Thelma, Lady Bruce-Errington,
sat at breakfast with her husband in their sun-shiny morning-room,
fragrant with flowers and melodious with the low piping of a tame thrush
in a wild gilded cage, who had the sweet habit of warbling his strophes
to himself very softly now and then, before venturing to give them
full-voiced utterance. A bright-eyed, feathered poet he was, and an
exceeding favorite with his fair mistress, who occasionally leaned back
in her low chair to look at him and murmur an encouraging "Sweet,
sweet!" which caused the speckled plumage on his plump breast to ruffle
up with suppressed emotion and gratitude.

Philip was pretending to read the _Times_, but the huge, self-important
printed sheet had not the faintest interest for him,--his eyes wandered
over the top of its columns to the golden gleam of his wife's hair,
brightened just then by the sunlight streaming through the window,--and
finally he threw it down beside him with a laugh.

"There's no news," he declared. "There never _is_ any news!"

Thelma smiled, and her deep-blue eyes sparkled.

"No?" she half inquired--then taking her husband's cup from his hand to
re-fill it with coffee, she added, "but I think you do not give yourself
time to find the news, Philip. You will never read the papers more than
five minutes."

"My dear girl," said Philip gaily, "I am more conscientious than you
are, at any rate, for you never read them at all!"

"Ah, but you must remember," she returned gravely, "that is because I do
not understand them! I am not clever. They seem to me to be all about
such dull things--unless there is some horrible murder or cruelty or
accident--and I would rather not hear of these. I do prefer books
always--because the books last, and news is never certain--it may not
even be true."

Her husband looked at her fondly; his thoughts were evidently very far
away from newspapers and their contents.

As she met his gaze, the rich color flushed her soft cheeks and her eyes
drooped shyly under their long lashes. Love, with her, had not yet
proved an illusion,--a bright toy to be snatched hastily and played with
for a brief while, and then thrown aside as broken and worthless. It
seemed to her a most marvellous and splendid gift of God, increasing
each day in worth and beauty,--widening upon her soul and dazzling her
l