Fermor, looking round the whole company, at one
end saw two bright faces, rich in fulness and
colour, which were as effective as a good many
of Major Carter's lights. He saw their brother
standing up beside them, looking towards him
sourly and distrustfully, and on the other side
was bending down a figure whom his instinct
told him was Hanbury. When the latter lifted
himself from his bent position, and the light
from some of Major Carter's wax-lights fell upon
his face, Fermor saw that it was radiant and
blazing, what, in a moment of pique, he would
have called "an oafish good humour" and
happiness. Some of this tight was reflected on to
the two girls' faces.

Fermor, feeling another of those sharp pangs
which he had experienced before, turned
suddenly aside with his best air of indifference, and
broke into the little gipsy encampment, beside
him. He was scarcely of the pattern for that
company—of the noisy, roystering irregularities
in which they delighted. He had always treated
them with a coldness that was almost insolence,
and had passed them with a look of half
astonishment, half contempt. But though thus long
outraged, they seemed to look wistfully at him,
and there are those who are grateful for even a
crumb of civility. His irruption was now a
surprise, and welcomed with delight. He threw
the party of boys into disorder, who could scarce
cope with a craft of this metal. The Arabian
tossed her head proudly, and was almost
obsequious to him. The second Miss Manuel,
looking over of a sudden, saw the Christian
knight ensnared by those Moabitish women, and
started. Hanbury, whose face was like a
sunbeam, and who found himself that night drifting
deliciously down the river, suddenly found her
grow distrait.

Presently there was to be music. The eldest
Miss Manuel was taken over to a tiny cottage
piano, led by Major Carter, who, leaning on it as
it were on a balcony, and looking in her face,
talked critically and with fluency of its beauties
and secret powers. "I dare say," he said,
"you would not guess who chose this for me.
I can do nothing in this way myself—at least,
nothing you would care to listen to. Yet old
Lord Dogberry always said I was made for
something better than, merely strumming
tunes."

Miss Manuel let her fingers amble very
lightly down over the keys, and up again,
as it might be over a smooth green sward. She
smiled. The sound was woody and dull. She
was happy that night, and glanced over at her
sister, where all was going so well.

"You don't think much of our piano," he
said. "No wonder! You should have had an
Erard, the most splendid that could be got for
money. Yet I assure you Miss Van Tromp,
Lady Charlotte's daughter, you know, chose it
herself. I assure you she said—" continued
he, half turning round and addressing a little
audience that had gathered—"she said there
was a peculiar sustained ring in the middle
notes which she had never met with in any
other instrument. One might be choosing
pianos for years without meeting such a thing.
Quite an accident."

Miss Manuel, out of a sort of curiosity, began
to sound this middle department in many keys.
It did seem wonderful how that dull percussion
of wood upon wood could have so struck Lady
Charlotte's daughter; but such is the force of
prestige and musical authority, that heads were
presently seen bent a little on one side, at a
slight angle, and it was thought that indications
of this rare and peculiar timbre were to be
detected.

Major Carter listened with pleasure, looking
round from one to the other. "As you may
imagine," he said, "I only thought myself too
lucky, and snapped it up at once. And there
you see what it is."

This is a sample of that shining varnish, a
bottle of which Major Carter always carried in
his conversational pocket. With this he lubricated
every article of his personal property, and
made them dazzle the eyes of the public. It
was an artful, but at the same time a cheap
process. As she broke into her symphony,
which had a sort of wild awkwardness, and a
lawless measure, she thought she would do her
best, and sang a sort of Spanish song, full of a
strange defiance and picturesqueness, and in
which the clinking sounds of the castanets
seemed to be heard, and short scarlet petticoats
to flash. It was sung with extraordinary spirit,
and almost recklessness.

This sort of entertainment scarcely fell within
the round of amusements the Campbells
affected. Music was profitable for them in a
certain sense: finding it like the music in a
melodrama, effective for "talking through."
Fermor entertained them with an acted hilarity
and gaiety, but he noted warily, piteous restless
glances stolen over in his direction, and was
pleased with his own skill. Presently the
brother passed close by, and rather fretted him
by a satisfied supercilious air, as who should
say, all danger is past and we are now in port.
And finally Miss Manuel, having vocally danced
her Bolero, and being led past in a sort of
progress by Major Carter, who was expatiating
airily and with lively gesture on her as they
walked, she looked so bright and "lustrous,"
and gave Fermor such a warm cordial happy
greeting, that his brow became suddenly overcast,
and his manner absent; and having accepted
a lively sally of Miss Jessie Campbell with an
extraordinary assumed relish but a few moments
before, he now received the next with his
coldest stare, and quite discomposed her.
Presently, he saw some of the youths of the
regiment, whose angry passions he had inflamed by
his sudden interference, and who had gradually
withdrawn, growling vindictively, telling new
ladies to whom they had attached themselves
all about the mess-table scene. And Captain
Thersites, passing quite close, and lounging past,
called out wit li an unmistakable sneer, "Poor,
poor Fermor!"

Miss Jessie Campbell, who illustrated the