whole composition. She is worth three
times my weight, in pure gold. Ain't you,
Maudie?"

"I should say," answered Maud, stiffly,
"that a discussion of our comparative
merits would be highly uninteresting to
Mr. Plew."

Mr. Plew looked amazingly uncomfortable.
The vicar came to his rescue.

"We are much obliged to your
unremitting attention, Mr. Plew. And to it
is owing, under Providence, the happy issue
of this affair. I can venture to say that
Sir John is very sensible of his debt to
you. I have seen and spoken with him
to-day for the first time."

"O, indeed, sir?"

"Yes; a very agreeable man, Sir John."

"I dare say he is, Mr. Levincourt. But
you know the circumstances under which I
have seen him have not been favourable
exactly." Here Mr. Plew tittered faintly.

"H'm! Not a good patient, eh?"

"I won't say that, sir. But I should say
he had not been accustomed to be restrained
in any way. His servant manages him,
though."

"Paul is a capital fellow; one of those
excellent servants that one never finds in
England."

"Indeed, sir?"

"No, our soil won't grow them. Or, if
one is to be found here and there, they are,
at any rate, not indigenous to Daneshire."

"Daneshire people, high or low, are not
remarkable for civility," observed Veronica.

"Nor servility," added Maud.

"I suppose we shall soon be losing our
guest," resumed the vicar. " He spoke to-
day of relieving us of his presence, et cetera.
The fact is, that to us personally his stay
involves scarcely any inconvenience. But
he will naturally be anxious to be gone as
soon as may be. How soon do you think
he will be able to travel?"

Mr. Plew could not tell. He would be
able to judge better on that point when the
sick man should have left his couch. He
anticipated that Sir John would find
himself very weak. There had been much
prostration.

"I hear," proceeded Mr. Plew, "that
Sir John Gale's groom and three hunters
have been sent away from the Crown. I
was at Shipley Magna to-day, and was
told that the servant and horses had left
for Danecester on Wednesday. They are
bound for a place, that Sir John owns, in
the south, somewhere. I forget the name
of it. He is immensely rich, from what I
can gather."

As thus Mr. Plew gossipped on, in a
monotonous tone, the vicar listened, or seemed to
listen, with half-closed eyes. His thoughts
were in reality harking back to Veronica's
phrase that Shipley must be "a mere little
ugly blot " in Sir John's map of the world.
And then the vicar indulged in some
"sweet self-pity;" contrasting his days
spent among Daneshire hinds, and under
Daneshire skies, with the brightness of
his three years' sojourn abroad. And yet
those years spent in foreign lands had been
haunted by the ghost of a lost love, and by
a vain regret.

Presently Mr. Plew's talk turned on the
choir of St. Gildas, the progress it had
made, and the desirability of introducing
still further improvements. Then Mr.
Levincourt roused himself to attend to what
was being said. He began to talk himself,
and he talked very well. Veronica and
Maud sat a little apart, away from the
glare of the fire, and held a whispered
consultation as to their toilets on the
nineteenth.

Maud had her share of natural girlish
interest in the topic; but she tired of it
long before her companion. With a quiet
movement she drew a book from beneath
a heap of coloured wools and canvas in her
work-basket, and began to read, almost
stealthily, half hidden behind the vicar's
arm-chair.

Veronica advanced to the hearth, drew
her chair up opposite to Mr. Plew, and
disposed one foot, coquettishly peeping
from under the folds of her dress, on the
polished steel bar of the fender.

Mr. Plew stumbled, stammered, and lost
the thread of his discourse.

"I beg your pardon," said the vicar, " I
don't comprehend your last remark. I
was saying that there are some pretty
quaint bits of melody in those sonatas of
Kozeluch. Miss Desmond plays the piano-
forte part. Bring your flute some evening,
and try them over with her. The piano-
forte may be unlocked again now, I
suppose. When I said that Sir John's stay
involved no personal inconvenience to us, I
reckoned on our being allowed to hear the
voice of music once again."

"Mr. Plew's flute has the softest of
voices, papa. I am sure its aërial breathings
could not penetrate to the blue
chamber."

"Ah, there, now—there, Miss Veronica
—Miss Levincourt—you're chaffing me."