“I want to congratulate you on the new organist,” Mr Cheney said, “and I want to meet her. Alice tells me it is a lady. She must have devoted a lifetime to hard study to become such a marvellous mistress of that difficult instrument.” Arthur Stuart smiled. “Wait a moment,” he said, “and I will send for her. I would like you to meet her, and like her to meet your wife and family. She has few, if any, acquaintances in my congregation.” Mr Cheney went down the aisle, and joined the three ladies who were waiting for him in the pew. All were smiling, for all three believed that he had been asking the rector to accompany them home to dinner. His first word dispelled the illusion. “Wait here a moment,” he said. “Mr Stuart is going to bring the organist to meet us. I want to know the woman who can move me so deeply by her music.” Over the faces of his three listeners there fell a cloud. Mabel looked annoyed, Alice sulky, and a flush of the old jealous fury darkened the brow of the Baroness. But all were smiling deceitfully when Joy Irving approached. Her radiant young beauty, and the expressions of admiration with which Preston Cheney greeted her as a woman and an artist, filled life with gall and wormwood for the three feminine listeners. “What! this beautiful young miss, scarcely out of short frocks, is not the musician who gave us that wonderful harmony of sounds. My child, how did you learn to play like that in the brief life you have passed on earth? Surely you must have been taught by the angels before you came.” A deep blush of pleasure at the words which, though so extravagant, Joy felt to be sincere, increased her beauty as she looked up into Preston Cheney’s admiring eyes. And as he held her hands in both of his and gazed down upon her it seemed to the Baroness she could strike them dead at her feet and rejoice in the act. Beside this radiant vision of loveliness and genius, Alice looked plainer and more meagre than ever before. She was like a wayside weed beside an American Beauty rose. “I hope you and Alice will become good friends,” Mr Cheney said warmly. “We should like to see you at the house any time you can make it convenient to come, would we not Mabel?” Mrs Cheney gave a formal assent to her husband’s words as they turned away, leaving Joy with the rector. And a scene in one of life’s strangest dramas had been enacted, unknown to them all. “I would like you to be very friendly with that girl, Alice,” Mr Cheney repeated as they seated themselves in the carriage. “She has a rare face, a rare face, and she is highly gifted. She reminds me of someone I have known, yet I can’t think who it is. What do you know about her, Baroness?” The Baroness gave an expressive shrug. “Since you admire her so much,” she said, “I rather hesitate telling you. But the girl is of common origin—a grocer’s daughter, and her mother quite an inferior person. I hardly think it a suitable companionship for Alice.”