“You will not find that I am such a terrible person after all, Miss--Miss----” “Wadhurst,” said Rosa. “I should have introduced you. Miss Wadhurst--Mr. Kelton.” “I heard you last year,” murmured Miss Wadhurst. “I am not likely to forget it. I am not nearly good enough to be your accompanist, Mr. Kelton; but if you will make allowances----” “Don’t be afraid,” said he with a condescending wave of the left hand--the right was engaged at the point of his moustache. “You will find me anything but the dreadful person you might imagine me to be. All that I ask is to have my instructions carried out to the letter. I am sure that I shall have no trouble with you, Miss Wadhurst.” “I can only do my best, Mr. Kelton,” said Priscilla, sitting down at the piano. “What a nice girl she is! and plays so prettily too,” murmured Mrs. Cafifyn, resuming her seat and addressing the lady next to her, a Mrs. Musgrave. “Pity she made such a fool of herself!” said Mrs. Musgrave, who, being a large subscriber to the Church and other charities, availed herself of the privilege of speaking out when she pleased; and it pleased her to speak rather more frequently than she pleased by speaking. “Ah, yes, yes--a sad story--very sad!” assented the Rector’s wife with a pleasant sigh. And then Miss Wadhurst struck the first chords of “In the Land of Sleep” in no spirit of compromise. She played the accompaniment a great deal better than Mr. Tutt had played it--Mr. Tutt said so, and he knew. Mr. Kelton affirmed it, though he knew nothing about it. Miss Wadhurst knew a good deal about a piano, and within the past half-hour she had acquired more than an elementary knowledge of the vanity of an amateur tenor. She knew that she was at the piano not to do anything more artistic than to feed the vanity of the vocalist, and she found herself giving him a very generous meal. She never allowed the instrument to assert itself, and she wilfully rejected several chances that the music offered her of showing him what was the exact effect he should aim at achieving. She knew what the music meant and she knew what the man meant, and she let him do what he pleased. She gave him plenty of rope and he made use of every fathom. She waited while he lingered lovingly on the high note that came into the setting of every stanza, and she smothered up his false quantities in his lower range. She prolonged the symphony which the composer had artfully introduced between one stanza and the next--this was the great feature of the song, for it enabled the tenor to burst in with startling effect just when people were getting thoughtful--and, above all, she allowed the vocalist to have the last word, though the composer meant this to be the perquisite of the piano.