And then Lewis went to the piano and began to play. Miss Jean took up her work and threaded her needle, and prepared for enjoyment, for to work and be read to, or hear music played to you was one of her beatitudes; but by-and-by the table-cover fell upon her knees again, and she turned her face towards the musician in a growing ecstacy of attention. Music is not like any other of the arts, it does not address itself to the intellect. Miss Margaret was far more clever than her sister, but she had no comprehension of Beethoven. Jean had the ear to hear. At first her mind was somewhat agitated by doubts whether her sister would approve, and even whether it was altogether prudent to have thus received a young man whom nobody knew. She thought of the text, "Lay hands suddenly on no man," and she was a little confused about the matter altogether. And, had she been like her sister, Miss Jean would have continued in this mood; she would have recognized that it was good playing, but her mind would have been able to consider the original question all through it, and her doubts, it is possible, might have been increased rather than set at rest by the proficiency of the young musician, a proficiency to which, so far as her experience went, very few gentlemen attained. But Miss Jean had a faculty which Margaret lacked. After a while she forgot everything but the divine strain that was in her ear. The table-cover slipped over her knees to the ground, and she was not even aware of it; the silks, so carefully arranged in their right shades, dropped too, and lay all tangled and mixed up on the carpet. Miss Jean did not care. She neither saw nor heard anything but the music; she sat with her hands clasped, her eyes fixed upon the piano, her mind absorbed. When he stopped, she could not speak; she waved her hand to him inarticulately, not even knowing what she wanted to say. And Lewis, after a little pause, resumed. It was some time since he had touched a piano, and his mind too was agitated and full of many questions. It was not for nought that he had got admittance here. Perhaps a little of the elevation of a martyr was in his thoughts. It had not occurred to him, so long as Sir Patrick lived, that he was sacrificing his youth to the old man. It had not occurred to him until he came here: now he seemed to see it more clearly. And he had come with the intention of sacrificing himself once more, of giving up natural choice and freedom, and returning his fortune (burdened indeed with himself) to the family from which it had come. It was only now with Miss Jean's mild eyes upon him that he fully realized all this. He kept looking at her, as he played, with close and anxious observation. Not an idea of the light in which she appeared to him was in Miss Jean's mind. That any man should be looking at her with the idea of making her his wife would have startled her beyond expression; but a young man--a youth whom she regarded as not much more than a boy!