"I wish I were a magician," he said; and then, with one of his outbursts of confidence, which, having no previous clue to guide them, nobody understood--"What it would have been," he said, clasping his hands together, "if I had come here two years ago!" Lilias looked at him with extreme surprise. She thought he had suddenly grown tired, as people so often do, of discussing the desires of others, and had plunged back thus abruptly into his own. "If you had come here?" she said, with a little wonder. "Has Murkley, then, something to do with you too?" He did not make her any reply; but, after a while, said, faltering slightly, "I hope that--Miss Jean--is well. I hope it is not presumption, too much familiarity, to call her so." "Oh, everybody calls her Miss Jean," said Lilias. "There is no over-familiarity. She is so happy with your music; she plays it half the day, and then she says she is not worthy to play it, that she is not fit to be listened to after you." "I think," said Lewis, "that there can be no music that she is not worthy to play, not if it were the angel-music straight out of heaven." "And did you see that, so little as you have known of her?" cried Lilias, gratefully. "Ah, then I can see what she finds in you, for you must be one that can understand. Do you know what Margaret says of Jean?--that she is unspotted from the world." "And it is true." The countenance of Lewis grew very serious as he spoke; all its lines settled down into a fixed gravity, yet tenderness. Lilias was altogether bewildered by this expression. He took Jean's praises far too much to heart for a stranger, yet as if they gave him more sadness than pleasure. Why should he be sad because Jean was good? An inclination to laugh came over her, and yet it was cruel to laugh at anything so serious as his face. "And she has had her patience so tried--oh! dear Jean, how she has had her patience tried, her and Margaret, with me--me to bring-up! I have been such a handful." Lewis was taken entirely by surprise by this leap from grave to gay. He was taken, as it were, with the tear in his eye, his own mind bent on the solemnest of matters, and she knowing nothing, amused by that too serious aspect, made fun of him openly, turning his pensiveness into laughter! He looked at her almost with alarm, and then he smiled, but went no further. "It is that he will not laugh at Jean--no, nor anything about her; and what a thing am I to do it!" Lilias cried out within herself, with a revulsion as sudden into self-disgust. And then they both became very grave, and walked along by each other's side in tremendous solemnity, neither saying a word. "Are you, too, so fond of music?" Lewis asked at length. Lilias gave him a half-comic look, and put her hands together with a little petition for tolerance. "It is not my fault," she said, softly. "I have not had time to understand."