with grave satisfaction. Finally, he took up the pen once more, hesitated, balanced it between his fingers, and then let it fall. "Why should I write to her?" said he, while a sullen shadow crossed his face. "She will hear it soon enough. Since she is to have her own way about my career for the rest of my life, she may well wait a day or two to know it. Besides, I can't explain in a letter why I have given in. No, I won't write to-day." He shut up his blotting-case with an impatient gesture, and there was nothing for Mrs. Sidney Harding by that afternoon's post. He went down the great stone stairs with his letters, and laid them on the hall table, as Barbara had told him to do. Then, pausing for a moment to study the weather-glass, a note or two, uncertainly struck, attracted his attention. The door of the yellow drawing-room was partly open, and Mr. Hayes was presumably out, for Barbara was at the old piano. When Harding turned his head he could see her from where he stood. The light from the south window fell on the simple folds of her soft woollen dress, and brightened them to a brownish gold. She sat with her head slightly bent, touching the keys questioningly and tentatively, till she found a little snatch of melody, which she played more than once as if she were eagerly listening to it. The piano was worn out, of that there could be no doubt, yet Reynold found enchantment in the shallow tinkling sounds. He could not have uttered his feelings in any words at his command, but that mattered the less since Mr. Adrian Scarlett had enjoyed _his_ feelings in the summer time, and, touching them up a little, had arranged them in verse. It was surely honour enough for that poor little tune that its record was destined to appear one day in the young fellow's volume of poems. _AT HER PIANO._ _It chanced I loitered through a room, Dusk with a shaded, sultry gloom, And full of memories of old, times-- I lingered, shaping into rhymes My visions of those earlier days 'Mid their neglected waifs and strays A yellowing keyboard caught my gaze, And straight I fancied, as I stood Resting my hand on polished wood, Letting my eyes, contented, trace The daintiness of inlaid grace, That Music's ghost, outworn and spent, Dreamed, near her antique instrument._ _But when I broke its silence, fain To call an echo back again Of some old-fashioned, tender strain, Played once by player long since dead-- I found my dream of music fled! The chords I wakened could but speak In jangled utterance, thin and weak, In shallow discords, as when age Reaches its last decrepit stage, In feeble notes that seemed to chide-- This was the end! I stepped aside, In my impatient weariness, Into the window's draped recess. Without, was all the joy of June; Within, a piano out of tune!_