"She's a nice girl," said Bertie, "but a promising pupil--O Lord!" He flew to the piano, played an air in a singularly wooden manner, and then dragged it languidly, yet laboriously, up and down the keys. "Variations, you perceive." After a little more of this treatment the unfortunate melody grew very lame indeed, and finally died of exhaustion. "That's Miss Emmeline Nash," said Bertie, spinning round on the music-stool and confronting Percival. "It is very like Emmeline's style of playing," Judith owned. "Of course it is. Let's have something else for a change." And turning back to the piano, he began to sing. Then he called Judith to come and take her turn. She sang well, and Percival, by the fireside, noted the young fellow's evident pride in her performance, and admired the pair. (Any one else might have admired the three, for Thorne's grave, foreign-looking face was just the fitting contrast to the Lisles' fair, clear features. The morbid depression of a couple of months earlier had passed, and left him far more like the Percival of Brackenhill. Poverty surrounded the friends and dulled their lives, but as yet it was only a burden, not a blight.) "You sing," said Bertie, looking back. "I remember you were great at some of those old songs. I'll play for you: what shall it be?" "I'm sure I hardly know," said Percival, coming forward. "Let's have 'Shall I, wasting in despair,'" Lisle suggested. "It has been going in my head all this morning." He played a few notes. "No, no!" the other exclaimed hurriedly--"not that." Too well he remembered the tender devotion of more than a year before: If she love me, this believe, I will die ere she shall grieve. Sissy and Brackenhill rose before him--the melancholy orchard-walk, the little hands which lay in his on that November day. He felt a dull pain, yet what could he do? what could he have done? There was a terrible mistake somewhere, but he could not say where. If he had married Sissy, would it not have been there? He woke up suddenly. Young Lisle was speaking, and Judith was saying, "Let Mr. Thorne choose." "Oh, I don't mind," said Percival. "Shall it be 'Drink to me only with thine eyes'?" He sang it well. His voice was strong and full, and the sweet old-fashioned courtesy of compliment suited him exactly. The last word had scarcely left his lips when the door opened, and Emma showed in Mr. Clifton of St. Sylvester's.