Miss Goodenough, however, though admitting perforce the merits of the great masters of English song, regarded the claims of poetry as generally subordinate to those of history, geography, arithmetic, and various other branches of useful and ornamental learning, and treated Maud's passion for Sir Walter Scott as but another alarming symptom of an excitable disposition and ill-regulated mind. A crisis came at last. It happened at church, where Miss Goodenough's young ladies used to sit just under the gallery, while the boys of 'The Crescent House Academy' performed their devotions overhead. One fatal Sunday in February, just as the Service was over, and the two Misses Goodenough had already turned their backs to lead the way out, and the young ladies were preparing to follow, a little missive came fluttering down and fell almost into Maud's hands; at any rate, she slipped it into her Prayer-book; and all would have gone well but for that horrid Mademoiselle de Vert, who, turning sharply round, detected the occurrence, and the moment Maud was outside the church demanded her Prayer-book. Maud turned fiery red in an instant, and surrendered her book. 'And the note,' said Mademoiselle de Vert. 'What note?' said Maud. But alas! her telltale cheeks rendered the question useless, and made all evasion impossible. Maud was speedily driven to open resistance. 'No, thank you,' she said, with an air that told Mademoiselle de Vert that further attempts at coercion would be labour thrown away; 'it was not intended for you; it was a valentine.' After this appalling disclosure there was, of course, when they got home, an explanation to be had with Miss Goodenough, who professed herself, and probably really was, terrified at so new a phase of human depravity. Maud was presently in floods of tears, and was obliged to confess that she and the offending culprit had on more than one occasion let each other's eyes meet, had in fact exchanged looks, and even smiles; so that, perhaps, she was the real occasion for this unhallowed act of temerity. 'Forgive me, forgive me!' she cried; 'it was nothing wrong; it was only a heart with an arrow and a Cupid!' 'A Cupid!' cried Miss Goodenough, in horror at each new revelation, 'and some writing too, I suppose?' 'Yes,' said Maud, whose pleasure in the valentine was rapidly surmounting the disgrace into which it had got her; 'really pretty verses. Here it is!' And thereupon she produced the offending billet, and proceeded to read with effusion:-- I would thou wert a summer rose, And I a bird to hover o'er thee; And from the dawn to evening's close To warble only, 'I adore thee!'