dinner, and Madame Dor was included in the
invitation. If Vendale had been over head and
ears in love before—a phrase not to be taken as
implying the faintest doubt about it—this dinner
plunged him down in love ten thousand fathoms
deep. Yet, for the life of him, he could not get
one word alone with charming Marguerite. So
surely as a blessed moment seemed to come,
Obenreizer, in his filmy state, would stand
at Vendale's elbow, or the broad back of
Madame Dor would appear before his eyes.
That speechless matron was never seen in a
front view, from the moment of her arrival to
that of her departure—except at dinner. And
from the instant of her retirement to the
drawing-room, after a hearty participation in that
meal, she turned her face to the wall again.

Yet, through four or five delightful though
distracting hours, Marguerite was to be seen,
Marguerite was to be heard, Marguerite was to
be occasionally touched. When they made the
round of the old dark cellars, Vendale led her by
the hand; when she sang to him in the lighted
room at night, Vendale, standing by her, held
her relinquished gloves, and would have bartered
against them every drop of the forty-five year
old, though it had been forty-five times forty-five
years old, and its nett price forty-five times
forty-five pounds per dozen. And still, when
she was gone, and a great gap of an
extinguisher was clapped on Cripple Corner, he
tormented himself by wondering, Did she think
that he admired her! Did she think that he
adored her! Did she suspect that she had won
him, heart and soul! Did she care to think at
all about it! And so, Did she and Didn't she,
up and down the gamut, and above the line
and below the line, dear, dear! Poor restless
heart of humanity! To think that the men who
were mummies thousands of years ago, did the
same, and ever found the secret how to be
quiet after it!

"What do jou think, George," Wilding
asked him next day, "of Mr. Obenreizer? (I
won't ask you what you think of Miss Oben-
reizer)."

"I don't know," said Vendale, "and I never
did know, what to think of him."

"He is well informed and clever," said
Wilding.

"Certainly clever."

"A good musician." (He had played very
well, and sung very well, overnight.)

"Unquestionably a good musician."

"And talks well."

"Yes," said George Vendale, ruminating,
"and talks well. Do you know, Wilding, it
oddly occurs to me, as I think about him, that
he doesn't keep silence well!"

"How do you mean? He is not obtrusively
talkative."

"No, and I don't mean that. But when he
is silent, you can hardly help vaguely, though
perhaps most unjustly, mistrusting him. Take
people whom you know and like. Take any
one you know and like."

"Soon done, my good fellow," said Wilding.
"I take you."

"I didn't bargain for that, or foresee it,"
returned Veudale, laughing. "However, take me.
Reflect for a moment. Is your approving
knowledge of my interesting face, mainly founded
(however various the momentary expressions it
may include) on my face when I am silent?"

"I think it is," said Wilding.

"I think so too. Now, you see, when
Obenreizer speaks—in other words, when he is
allowed to explain himself away—he comes out
right enough; but when he has not the
opportunity of explaining himself away, he comes out
rather wrong. Therefore it is, that I say he
does not keep silence well. And passing hastily
in review such faces as I know, and don't trust,
I am inclined to think, now I give my mind to
it, that none of them keep silence well."

This proposition in Physiognomy being new
to Wilding, he was at first slow to admit
it, until asking himself the question whether
Mrs. Goldstraw kept silence well, and
remembering that her face in repose decidedly invited
trustfulness, he was as glad as men usually are
to believe what they desire to believe.

But, as he was very slow to regain his spirits
or his health, his partner, as another means of
setting him up—and perhaps also with contingent
Obenreizer views—reminded him of those
musical schemes of his in connexion with his
family, and how a singing-class was to be formed
in the house, and a Choir in a neighbouring
church. The class was established speedily,
and, two or three of the people having already
some musical knowledge, and singing tolerably,
the Choir soon followed. The latter was led
and chiefly taught, by Wilding himself: who had
hopes of converting his dependents into so
many Foundlings, in respect of their capacity to
sing sacred choruses.

Now, the Obenreizers being skilled musicians
it was easily brought to pass that they should
be asked to join these musical unions.
Guardian and Ward consenting, or Guardian
consenting for both, it was necessarily brought to
pass that Vendale's life became a life of absolute
thraldom and enchantment. For, in the mouldy
Christopher Wren church on Sundays, with its
dearly beloved brethren assembled and met
together, five-and-twenty strong, was not that Her
voice that shot like light into the darkest places,
thrilling the walls and pillars as though they
were pieces of his heart! What time, too,
Madame Dor in a corner of the high pew, turning
her back upon everybody and everything,
could not fail to be Ritualistically right at some
moment of the service; like the man whom the
doctors recommended to get drunk once a month,
and who, that he might not overlook it, got
drunk every day.

But, even those seraphic Sundays were
surpassed by the Wednesday concerts established
for the patriarchal family. At those concerts
she would sit down to the piano and sing
them, in her own tongue, songs of her own
land, songs calling from the mountain-tops
to Vendale, "Rise above the grovelling level
country; come far away from the crowd;
pursue me as I mount higher, higher, higher,