What right had this person of unknown antecedents, position, and character to be posturing there before them?--to be admitted at all to the house of her father? And then her eyes happened to fall upon her father's wife, who, in the chair nearest the musician, was listening to him with noticeable enjoyment. She turned and left the room. By doing this she came directly upon Frederick Owen, who had apparently performed the same action a little while before. They were alone in the wide hall; every one else was in the drawing-room, gathered round the singer. "It--it was cooler here," Owen explained, rather awkwardly. At this instant Dupont's voice floated out to them in one of his long, soft notes. "It has 'a dying fall,' has it not?" said the clergyman; he was trying to speak politely of her guest. But as his eyes met those of Miss Carroll, he suddenly read in them a feeling of the same strength and nature as his own, regarding that guest. This was a surprise, and a satisfaction. It was the first corresponding dislike he had been able to discover. For his own dislike had been so strong that he had been searching in all directions for a corresponding one, with the hope, perhaps, of proving to himself that his was not mere baseless prejudice. But until this evening he had not succeeded in finding what he sought. It was all the other way. It should be mentioned here that Owen had not betrayed this dislike of his. If he had done so, if his objection to the musician had been known, or even suspected, it is probable that Dupont would hardly have attained his present position in Far Edgerley. For after Madam Carroll's opinion, the opinion of the rector of St. John's came next. But he had not betrayed it. There was nothing of essential importance against Dupont. The fact that he was precisely the kind of fellow whom Frederick Owen particularly disliked was simply a matter between the two men themselves, or rather, as Dupont cared nothing about it, between Owen and his own conscience; for he could hardly go about denouncing a man because he happened to play the guitar. But after three weeks of enduring him--for he met him wherever he went--it was great comfort to have caught that gleam of contempt in Miss Carroll's fair gray eyes; he was glad that he had been at just the right spot in the hall to receive it as she came from the drawing-room with that alluring voice floating forth behind her. "It is a beautiful evening," he said, dropping the subject of the musician; "the moonlight is so bright that one can see all the mountains. Shall we go out and look at them?"