The obvious nature of the advice, of which this remark is a sample, did not spoil it. Sometimes it is a comfort to have the thing said to us that we quite see for ourselves. In to-day's unwonted mood Molly was ready to receive very ordinary wisdom as golden. And then Lady Groombridge discovered that Molly was musical, and the older woman loved music, finding in it some of the romance which was shut out by her own limitations and by a life of over great bustle and worry. So Molly found in her music expression for her joy in the spring, and her wistful, undefined sense of hope in life. Lady Groombridge, sitting near her, listened almost hungrily, and asked for more. She was utterly sad to-night with the "might have been" of a childless woman. The news of the final sacrifice on the part of the heir to Groombridge, of all that meant so much to herself and her husband, had made so keen to her the sense of emptiness in their old age. And the music soothed her into a deeper feeling of submission that in reality underlay the outward unrest and discontent of to-day. Submission was, at one time, the most marked virtue of every class in our country, and it may be found sometimes in those who, having lost all other conscious religion, will still say, "He knows best," revealing thereby the bed-rock of faith as the foundation of their lives. Lady Groombridge had not lost her religious beliefs, but she was more dutiful than devout, and did not herself often reflect on what strength duty depended. And Molly, who knew nothing of submission, yet ministered to the older woman's peace by her music. When the men came out, Lord Groombridge took a chair close to his wife's as if to share in her pleasure, and Edmund moved out of Molly's sight. She sometimes heard the voice of Rose or of Billy or of Mrs. Delaport Green, but not Sir Edmund's, and she naturally thought he was listening, whereas part of the time he was reading a review. But as the ladies were going up to bed, he said, looking into the large, grey eyes: "Who said she could do nothing but run like a deerhound and bandage like a surgeon? And now I find she can play like an artist. What next?" And Molly, standing in her room, said to herself that it had been the happiest day of her life. But a moment later the maid came in, and while helping to take off her dinner dress, told her mistress that the kitchenmaid in a room near hers was groaning horribly. It seemed that Lady Groombridge had given out some medicine, and Lady Rose had sent up her hot-water bottle and her spirit-lamp, and had advised that the bottle be constantly refilled during the night.