She raised her head directly, shook back the fair ringlets that had fallen over her face, and though the tears were still on her cheeks and filling her eyes, she said, with a blending of childish shyness and yet courageous truth, impossible to be described-- "No, ma'am, I am not too tired to play--I did not cry from fatigue, but because I was angry with mamma for not letting me dance any more, and angry with myself for answering her so pettishly; and because--because--I thought she was displeased, and that I deserved it." "Then come and redeem your character," was Mrs. Hamilton's only notice of a reply that actually made her heart throb with thankfulness, that her lessons of truth were so fully understood and practiced by one naturally so gentle and timid as her Emmeline: while Mrs. Allan knew not what to answer, from a feeling of involuntary respect. It would have been so easy to escape a disagreeable task by tacitly allowing that she was too tired to play; and what careful training must it have been to have so taught truth. "Mrs. Allan would not ask you before, because she knew you did not like to play while the room was so very full; therefore, ought you not to do your very best to oblige her?" Emmeline looked timidly up in her mother's face to be quite sure that her displeasure had subsided, as her words seemed to denote; and quite satisfied, her tears were all checked, and taking Mrs. Allan's offered hand, she went directly to the music-room. Mrs. Hamilton lingered to desire Herbert (who had come up to know the cause of his sister's sudden tears) to form the last quadrille, and reserve a place, if he possibly could, for Emmeline, as they would not begin till she had done. Her little girl was playing as she rejoined her, and it really was a pretty picture, her fairy figure with her tiny harp, and her sweet face seeming to express the real feeling with which she played. There was no execution in the simple Highland air, but her vivid imagination lent it a meaning, and so, when fairly playing, she did not mind it. Mrs. Allan had lost a little girl just at Emmeline's age, who had also played the harp, and there was something in her caress and thanks, after she had done, that made Emmeline stand quietly at her side, without heeding the praises that were lavished round her. Herbert at that moment appeared with one of the young Allans. "Come, Emmy, we are only waiting for you; Mr. Allan says you have not favored him to-night, and he hopes you will now." "Pray, do," added Mrs. Allan, as her son gayly pleaded his own cause; Emmeline only waited to read her mother's consent in her eyes, for she thought that she ought not to dance any more; and in another minute the joyous music had resounded, and she was dancing and chatting as gayly and happily as if there had been no interruption to her joy.