She did her best, however, to hide this side of her nature even from him. And it was not difficult. She remained childishly immature and backward in many things. She was a personality; that was clear; one could hardly say that she was or had a character. She was a bundle of loves and hates; a force, not an organism; and her father was often as much puzzled by her as anyone else. Music perhaps was the only study which ever conquered her indolence. Here it happened that a famous musician, who settled in Cambridge for a time, came across her gift and took notice of it. And to please him she worked with industry, even with doggedness. Brahms, Chopin, Wagner--these great romantics possessed her in music as Shelley or Rossetti did in poetry. "You little demon, Laura! How do you come to play like that?" a girl friend--her only intimate friend--said to her once in despair. "It's the expression. Where do you get it? And I practise, and you don't; it's not fair." "Expression!" said Laura, with annoyance, "what does that matter? That's the amateur all over. Of course I play like that because I can't do it any better. If I could _play the notes_"--she clenched her little hand, with a curious, almost a fierce energy--"if I had any technique--or was ever likely to have any, what should I want with expression? Any cat can give you expression! There was one under my window last night--you should just have heard it!" Molly Friedland, the girl friend, shrugged her shoulders. She was as soft, as normal, as self-controlled, as Laura was wilful and irritable. But there was a very real affection between them. Years passed. Insensibly Augustina's health began to fail; and with it the new cheerfulness of her middle life. Then Fountain himself fell suddenly and dangerously ill. All the peaceful habits and small pleasures of their common existence broke down after a few days, as it were, into a miserable confusion. Augustina stood bewildered. Then a convulsion of soul she had expected as little as anyone else, swept upon her. A number of obscure, inherited, half-dead instincts revived. She lived in terror; she slept, weeping; and at the back of an old drawer she found a rosary of her childhood to which her fingers clung night and day. Meanwhile Fountain resigned himself to death. During his last days his dimmed senses did not perceive what was happening to his wife. But he troubled himself about her a good deal. "Take care of her, Laura," he said once, "till she gets strong. Look after her.--But you can't sacrifice your life.--It may be Christian," he added, in a murmur, "but it isn't sense." Unconsciousness came on. Augustina seemed to lose her wits; and at last only Laura, sitting pale and fierce beside her father, prevented her stepmother from bringing a priest to his death-bed. "You would not _dare_!" said the girl, in her low, quivering voice; and Augustina could only wring her hands. * * * * *