A soft light was in the girl's eyes, two spots of colour burnt in her usually pale cheeks, her hand closed and unclosed nervously on the arm of her chair. 'There, even Marsden says they are beautiful, and he does not care much for poetry,' broke in Richard, triumphantly. 'Livy, it has come to this, that I am proud of my sister.' 'Hush, please don't talk so, Cardie,' remonstrated Olive with a look of distress. The spots of colour were almost hectic now, the smooth forehead furrowed with anxiety; she looked ready to cry. This hour was full of sweet torment to her. She shrank from this home criticism, so precious yet so perilous: for the first time she felt afraid of the utterance of her own written voice: if she only could leave them all and make her escape. She looked up almost pleadingly at Hugh Marsden, whose broad shoulders were blocking up the window, but he misunderstood her. 'Yes, I think them beautiful; but your brother is right, and I am no judge of poetry: metrical thoughts always appear so strange, so puzzling to me--it seems to me like a prisoned bird, beating itself against the bars of measurement and metres, as though it tried to be free.' 'Why, you are talking poetry yourself,' returned Richard; 'that speech was worthy of Livy herself.' Hugh burst into one of his great laughs; in her present mood it jarred on Olive. Aunt Milly had left her, and was talking to her father. Dr. John was at the other end of the room, busy over his copy. Why would they talk about her so? it was cruel of Cardie, knowing her as he did. She made a little gesture, almost of supplication, looking up into the curate's broad, radiant face, but the young man again misunderstood her. 'You must forgive me, I am sadly prosaic,' he returned, speaking now in a lower key; 'these things are beyond me. I do not pretend to understand them. That people should take the trouble to measure out their words and thoughts--so many feet, so many lines, a missed adjective, or a halting rhyme--it is that that puzzles me.' 'Fie, man, what heresy; I am ashamed of you!' broke in Richard, good-humouredly; 'you have forfeited Livy's good opinion for ever.' 'I should be sorry to do that,' returned Hugh, seriously, 'but I cannot help it if I am different from other people. When I was at college I used to take my sisters to the opera, poor Caroline especially was fond of it: do you know it gave me the oddest feeling. There was something almost ludicrous to me in hearing the heroine of the piece trilling out her woes with endless roulades; in real life people don't sing on their deathbeds.' 'Listen to him,' returned Richard, taking him by the shoulders; 'what is one to do with such a literal, matter-of-fact fellow? You ought to talk to him, Livy, and bring him to a better frame of mind.'