he did not play with his soul, and of all people in the world Miss Jean was the most sensitive to the difference. She loved music not for its technicalities, or for its execution, or for the grammar and correctness of its construction. She loved it for the soul of it, by instinct and not by purpose, and the fine dissatisfaction that arose in her when she felt it came to her from his fingers only is more than can be said. A veil of bewilderment came over her face. Was it her own fault? was her mind taken up with the excitement of the journey, the cares which she shared with her sister respecting Lilias? Miss Jean placed herself at the bar with a sort of consternation. But it was not she who was to blame. Had she received it as usual with serene satisfaction and delight, he would have continued for some time at least, anxious and excited though he was; but when the support of her faith was withdrawn, this became impossible. He stopped abruptly when he came to the end of the movement he was playing, broke into a wild fantasia, and finally jumped up from his seat after a great jar and shriek of outraged chords, holding out his hands in an appeal. "Pardon!" he cried, "pardon! I cannot play a note--it is too strong for me, and you have found me out." "You are not well," she said, with ready sympathy, "or there is something wrong." "There is this wrong," he said, "that I think all my life is going to be settled to-day. You, whom I have always revered and loved since I first saw you, let me tell it to you. Oh! not the same as what happened the other day when you stopped my mouth. I do not know what you will think of me, but it was not falsehood one way or another. I had scarcely seen her then. I have asked Miss Margaret for an interview, and this time it is for life or for--no, I will not be fictitious, I will not say death: for that is not how one dies." "An interview with Margaret?" Jean repeated after him. She grew a little pale in sympathy with his excitement. "My poor lad, my poor lad! and what is that for?" But she divined what it was for. For a moment it startled her indeed. That gentle sense of property, of a sort of possession in him, which was involuntary, which was the merest shadow of personal consciousness, disturbed and bewildered her for a moment. Was this what he had meant all along? It gave her a little shock of humiliation, not that he should have changed his mind, but that she should have mistaken him. How glad she was that she had stopped him at once, that she had prevented all compromising words; but yet the possibility that she had been so ridiculous as to mistake as addressed to herself what was meant for Lilias, did touch Miss Jean's mind for a moment with a thrill of pain; the next she was herself again. "It is Lilias you mean?" she said, in a low and tremulous voice.