This meagre return of compliments assumed a tone both grateful and sisterly as Lucy rehearsed it to the donor of the fragrant offering. The barest phrase of civility came gracefully and meaningly from her tongue. Serene in mind and countenance, she seated herself at the piano, and, as Philip took his stand at her side, he wondered if the world held another couple more entirely adapted each to the peculiar soul-needs of the other, more perfectly happy in the knowledge of mutual affection. Like the generality of theorists, your student of human nature is prone to grievous error when he reduces his flawless system to practice. In one respect, the two certainly harmonized well. Both loved music; both sang finely, and their voices accorded without a jarring note. Mr. Hunt read the evening papers in Sarah's room; turning and folding them with great circumspection, lest their rattling might annoy her, and detract from her enjoyment of the music. How could he guess the infatuation that caused her to listen greedily to sounds, under whose potent spell feeling was writhing and brain reeling? In every pause between the songs there arose in her memory two lines of a poem read long ago, when or where she knew not: "Seek not to soothe that proud, forsaken heart With strains whose sweetness maddens as they fall!" The performers had just completed a duet, in which each voice supported and developed, while blending with the other, when Lucy took up the prelude to a simpler lay; repeating it twice over with skilful variations, as if she were, meantime, carrying on a colloquy with her companion, that delayed the vocal part. This was ended by Philip's raising alone the burden of the plaintive German air Sarah remembered so truly--"The long, long, weary day." As his voice, full and strong, with its indescribable and irresistible undercurrent of pathos--flowing out here into passionate melancholy--swelled and floated through the quiet house, Sarah sat upright. "Father! father!" she whispered, huskily, "I cannot bear that! Shut the doors!--all of them, or I shall go mad!" She was obeyed; Mr. Hunt hurrying down to the parlor to silence the lovers, with the representation that Sarah was too nervous to endure the excitement of music. For the remainder of the evening, a profound stillness pervaded the upper part of the mansion--a silence that, to Sarah, throbbed with the melody she had tried to hush; and look where she might, she gazed into that rainy, ghastly night--the pale, comfortless watcher, the shadowy type of her deeper, more blighting sorrow. CHAPTER VIII.