working a garland of flowers. It was her own invention, drawn from Nature, and consequently, as she sometimes explained with a little pride, the winter-time, which was the best time for working in general, was lost to her, since she always liked to have her models under her eyes. At the present moment, a little cluster of pansies was before her in a glass, and the colours arranged upon the table in which she was to copy them. But she was not working; her table-cover lay on her lap. She was looking out vaguely upon the rain, and the wet trees, and the village roofs. It was supposed that Miss Jean was the one of the family who leant towards the sentimental, and no doubt there had been incidents in her gentle life which justified the opinion. She was thinking, as she would have said – perhaps even so late as this the soft-hearted, middle-aged maiden was dreaming – but, if so, nobody was the wiser for Miss Jean's dreams. They never prevented her ready attention to any appeal, and she only indulged in them when quite alone. They alternated with the flowers of the table-cover in her mind, and both were emanations of the same soft and tender spirit. The room was very still around this one quiet figure; behind her the dim atmosphere was brighter with the glow of a small, but cheerful fire. It was the opinion of the Miss Murrays, as of many other comfortable people, that in wet weather an old house was always the better for a fire. The little pétillement of the fire and the soft rush of the falling rain outside were all the sounds audible in the extreme stillness. What wonder that Miss Jean should drop the embroidered pansies on her lap, and take to thoughts which were a sort of spiritual prototypes of the pansies – thoughtlets, little musings, dreamikins, so to speak; they brought now and then from her gentle bosom the softest little sigh, not a sigh that hurt, but one that soothed. There was no part of her time that Miss Jean liked better than these moments which she spent by herself, when Margaret was reading history with Lilias. She closed up a pretty little note-book, which had been in her hand, when she heard the sound of the bell. If truth must be told, she had been writing in it a pretty little verse – a pansy of still another kind; for Miss Jean belonged to the age when it was a pretty accomplishment to write charming little "copies of verses," a thing very sweet and delightful for a young woman to do.

      The character of the place seemed to change at once when Lewis came in. Life, and cheerfulness, and variety came with him. He was very anxious to please and make himself agreeable. He told her of his walk to the water-side, of Stormont in the river, and Adam on the bank; water above and water below.

      "You will think me very effeminate," he said. "I much prefer this nice drawing-room;" and he looked round it with an admiring air that pleased Miss Jean.

      To tell the truth, Lewis was thinking that, though picturesque, it was probably damp, a suggestion which would not have pleased Miss Jean at all.

      "Gentlemen are very venturesome," said Miss Jean; "indeed, the wonder is that they are not all laid-up with rheumatism – but they're used to it, I suppose."

      "I am not at all used to it," said Lewis; and then he added, with one of his confidential impulses: "A great part of my life I have spent in attendance upon a dear old friend."

      "Indeed," said Miss Jean, her eyes lighting up with interest. "That is out of the way for a young man. You will excuse me, but I take a great interest – not father or mother, as you say a friend?"

      "No: my godfather, who took me up when my father and mother died, and who was like father and mother in one. He was lonely and old, and I never left him – for years."

      As Lewis spoke there came a gleam of moisture into his eyes, as he looked smiling into the face of the sympathetic woman, who had she but known – But no suspicion crossed the mind of Miss Jean.

      "Dear me!" she said; "lonely and old are sad words. And you gave up your young life to him? There are few that would have done that."

      "Oh, no, there was no giving-up, it was my happiness," said Lewis; "no one was ever so kind; he was my dear companion. And then, you know, abroad" – he smiled as he said this generic word which answered for everywhere – "abroad boys are not all brought up to be athletic; to defy the elements, as in England – "

      "I do not know very much about England," said Miss Jean, entirely unconscious that her visitor meant to embrace Tayside in this geographical term, "but there is too much fishing and shooting here. That is my opinion. I like a young man to be manly, but there are more things in the world than the trout and the birds. And no doubt you would learn your music to please your invalid? That is very touching. I took an interest from the first, but still more now when I know the cause."

      "That reminds me," cried Lewis, "that my sole excuse for coming was to play to you."

      "Don't say that, Mr. Murray. We are very glad to see you," said Miss Jean, though not without a quiver, "without any reason at all."

      "That is very kind, more kind than I can say. A stranger has double reason to be grateful."

      "The advantage is ours," said Miss Jean, with old-fashioned politeness; and then there was a momentary pause; for the question would obtrude itself upon her, in spite of herself, "What will Margaret say?"

      And then Lewis went to the piano and began to play. Miss Jean took up her work and threaded her needle, and prepared for enjoyment, for to work and be read to, or hear music played to you was one of her beatitudes; but by-and-by the table-cover fell upon her knees again, and she turned her face towards the musician in a growing ecstacy of attention. Music is not like any other of the arts, it does not address itself to the intellect. Miss Margaret was far more clever than her sister, but she had no comprehension of Beethoven. Jean had the ear to hear. At first her mind was somewhat agitated by doubts whether her sister would approve, and even whether it was altogether prudent to have thus received a young man whom nobody knew. She thought of the text, "Lay hands suddenly on no man," and she was a little confused about the matter altogether. And, had she been like her sister, Miss Jean would have continued in this mood; she would have recognized that it was good playing, but her mind would have been able to consider the original question all through it, and her doubts, it is possible, might have been increased rather than set at rest by the proficiency of the young musician, a proficiency to which, so far as her experience went, very few gentlemen attained. But Miss Jean had a faculty which Margaret lacked. After a while she forgot everything but the divine strain that was in her ear. The table-cover slipped over her knees to the ground, and she was not even aware of it; the silks, so carefully arranged in their right shades, dropped too, and lay all tangled and mixed up on the carpet. Miss Jean did not care. She neither saw nor heard anything but the music; she sat with her hands clasped, her eyes fixed upon the piano, her mind absorbed. When he stopped, she could not speak; she waved her hand to him inarticulately, not even knowing what she wanted to say. And Lewis, after a little pause, resumed. It was some time since he had touched a piano, and his mind too was agitated and full of many questions. It was not for nought that he had got admittance here. Perhaps a little of the elevation of a martyr was in his thoughts. It had not occurred to him, so long as Sir Patrick lived, that he was sacrificing his youth to the old man. It had not occurred to him until he came here: now he seemed to see it more clearly. And he had come with the intention of sacrificing himself once more, of giving up natural choice and freedom, and returning his fortune (burdened indeed with himself) to the family from which it had come. It was only now with Miss Jean's mild eyes upon him that he fully realized all this. He kept looking at her, as he played, with close and anxious observation. Not an idea of the light in which she appeared to him was in Miss Jean's mind. That any man should be looking at her with the idea of making her his wife would have startled her beyond expression; but a young man – a youth whom she regarded as not much more than a boy! It is to be feared that Miss Jean's sentiments would have been those of resentment. She would have thought herself insulted. But, happily, there was not in anything around the smallest suggestion of such a purpose. If the ladies of Murkley considered an intruder dangerous, it was entirely on account of Lilias. To think of themselves never entered their minds; they were beyond all that. They had settled down upon their own unchangeable fortunes with great peace and tranquillity, putting themselves, so far as the hopes and happiness of life were concerned, into Lilias. She was to enjoy for them, to get advancement, to go to court, to have all the delights and honours which they had never known. Generally it is in their children that women thus live by proxy; these maiden sisters felt it a special boon of Providence that, unmarried and without succession as they were in life,