comes on so easily, without intention, without at all perceiving any other effect. And, indeed, she only awoke to what she had done quite suddenly one evening when there was a dinner-party at Bampton-Leigh, and when, after the gentlemen came back to the drawing-room, she had been called upon to sing with Mr Fitzroy for the delight of the party, and without waiting for any special entreaty had complied. When they sang one song they were asked for another, in the most natural way in the world. "That is one of May's songs," said some one who was near the piano. "Oh, is it?" cried Nelly. "I have sung it several times with Mr Fitzroy." "But it is one of May's songs all the same," insisted this injudicious person. "I have heard her sing it very often, also with Mr Fitzroy." "Yes," said young Harcourt, who was present, and who was still more angry than Julia to see May seated at the other end of the room talking to an old lady. "It is certainly one of May's songs: and nobody could sing it so sweetly," the young man added, with fire in his eyes. "By the way," said the indiscreet person, "how is it, with so much music going on, that we have not had a song from May?" "Oh, May--has not been singing much for some time," said Miss Bampton, with a little quiver in her voice. And Mrs Brunton, startled, gave a sudden look round the room. She saw Fitzroy placing the music upon the piano in a deliberate, conscious way, which made it apparent to her suddenly awakened faculties that he was aware of the meaning in these words; and she caught young Harcourt's look fixed somewhat fiercely upon herself: and Julia, who had turned her head away and would not look at her at all: and May, in the background, smiling and talking to the old lady, talking very fast, smiling a little more than she meant, looking pale and "out of it"--that curious condition which is not to be described, but which betrays itself to a looker-on. All this Nelly saw with a sudden awakening to the real state of affairs, which ought, of course, to have occurred to her before. And for a moment shame and compunction were strong in her. "I am so glad," she said. "It is far more suited to her voice than mine: and I want so much to hear her sing it. Please, Mr Harcourt, go and ask her. I hadn't sung for ever so long before I came here," she added, apologetically, to the little circle round the piano, "and they made me begin again; and I never know when to stop--so that I have scarcely heard May. Isn't it a dreadful confession to make?" she said, with an embarrassed laugh. "You have so strong a voice," said Miss Bampton, melting a little. "May's voice is a little thing after yours." "May herself is a little thing beside me," said Mrs Brunton, sitting down apart from the piano. "I am almost old enough to be her mother!" She felt that in saying this she had made fully the _amende honorable_ to May.