spiriting. It was
more like a chant than a song. To-night he chose Tennyson's Bugle-song.
Her voice was subservient to the accompaniment, that shook its faint,
sweet bugle-notes at first as in a rosy splendor; it rose and swelled
and echoed and reverberated and died away slowly as if loath to depart.
Arnold's playing was the poem, Ruth's voice the music the poet
might have heard as he wrote, sweet as a violin, deep as the feeling
evolved,--for when she came to the line beginning, "oh, love, they die
in yon rich sky," she might have stood alone with one, in some high,
clear place, so mellow was the thrill of her voice, so rapt the
expression of her face. Kemp looked as if he would not tire if the sound
should "grow forever and forever."

Mrs. Levice was wakeful after she had gone to bed. Her husband also
seemed inclined to prolong the night, for he made no move to undress.

"Jules," said she in a low, confidential tone, "do you realize that our
daughter is twenty-two?"

He looked at her with a half-smile.

"Is not this her birthday?"

"Her twenty-second, and she is still unmarried."

"Well?"

"Well, it is time she were. I should like to see it."

"So should I," he acquiesced with marked decision.

Mrs. Levice straightened herself up in bed and looked at her husband
eagerly.

"Is it possible," she exclaimed, "that we have both thought of the same
parti?"

It was now Mr. Levice's turn to start into an interested position.

"Of whom," he asked with some restraint, "are you speaking?"

"Hush! Come here; I have longed for it for some time, but have never
breathed it to a soul,--Louis."

"Levice had become quite pale, but as she pronounced the familiar name,
the color returned to his cheek, and a surprised look sprang into his
eyes.

"Louis? Why do you think of such a thing?"

"Because I think them particularly well suited. Ruth, pardon me,
dear, has imbibed some very peculiar and high-flown notions. No merely
commonplace young man would make her happy. A man must have some ideas
outside of what his daily life brings him, if she is to spend a moment's
interested thought on him. She has repelled some of the most eligible
advances for no obvious reasons whatever. Now, she does not care a rap
for society, and goes only because I exact it. That is no condition
for a young girl to allow herself to sink into; she owes a duty to
her future. I am telling you this because, of course, you see nothing
peculiar in su