When the sound of music was diffused through the house some time after, Miss Margaret had a shrewd guess as to who the visitor was, and all the objections that existed to his introduction to Lilias came up before her mind, while the girl pursued, alas! very dully, the history of parliamentary institutions. "It will be the tuner come to put the piano in order," she said by-and-by, she too speaking unawares in the middle of a sentence. She felt that it was a fib, but yet it was not necessarily a fib, for why should not it be the tuner? It was about his time, she said to herself. This took from Lilias all desire to go down-stairs, all expectation of a break in the dulness. She went on with the drone of the history, which, to tell the truth, was quite as much a burden to Miss Margaret as to herself. But duty reigned supreme in the bosom of the elder sister, and Lilias had always been submissive. She was well aware, too, of the advantage of having Margaret instead of a governess. Miss Jackson would not have permitted her to slip to the window with her book in her hand to see who it was. Miss Jean was alone in the drawing-room, which was a large room, with a number of small windows, high set in the thick old walls, each with its own little recess. It was not light generally, but there were a great many Rembrandtish effects, intense lights and shadows in bright weather. To-day all was a sort of monotone of greenish dimness: the wet trees glistening; the expanse of the wet park throwing a vague reflection into the air. The room occupied a corner of the house, and the windows on one side looked out upon a lime-tree walk, which lay under the old enclosing wall, a high, semi-defensible erection, with a turret at the corner; and on the other looked on the park, which sloped downward towards the river. To the right hand the red-and-blue roofs of the village glistened under the rain, the tiles giving a little gleam of colour which the slates did their best to neutralize. Nothing could be more complete than the air of mutual protection and dependence which the village and the Castle bore, though the Castle was but a small and homely representative of power. Miss Jean sat alone in the window which commanded this prospect most fully. She had all her work materials there; a basket of fine silks in every shade, a case of pretty, shining silver implements, scissors, and thimbles, and bodkins, and on her lap a wonderful table-cover, upon which, as long as any of the young people remembered, she had been working a garland of flowers. It was her own invention, drawn from Nature, and consequently, as she sometimes explained with a little pride, the winter-time, which was the best time for working in general, was lost to her, since she always liked to have her models under her eyes. At the present moment, a little cluster of pansies was before her in a glass, and the colours arranged upon the table in which she was to copy them. But she was not