When Myles and Adrienne were in his house at the same time, they seemed to have little to say to each other; which was, perhaps, not surprising, for their subjects were not those discussed by Mary and Edmund. Harry Ashworth had a great deal to ask Miss Blisset about music; she comforted him, too, for she helped him to some scientific understanding of the mighty harmonies of which he was fast losing the outward apprehension. Harry had not read much about music or musicians; he had, while his hearing had been pretty good, contented himself with drinking in the sounds themselves. Adrienne soon discovered that the sorrow of his life was his failing hearing, and one evening it occurred to her to tell him the story of Beethoven. Mary and Harry and she happened to be alone. Adrienne began, and related that saddest of stories. It had the effect she intended. Harry sat with one hand shading his face, in an attitude which he had assumed soon after she began the story, when she said, ‘And at last he wrote to one of his friends and confessed that he was growing quite deaf--that if he went to the opera, he must sit close to the orchestra, and even then, even leaning over towards it, he could scarcely hear.’ Mary went on knitting. Adrienne’s voice, somewhat raised, slow, distinct, and clear, told the tale of that mighty genius--Christlike in the immensity of his woe and the utterness of his separation from those around him. She went through it all. She told him about the great symphonies, about Beethoven’s one or two sad, luckless love-episodes; his poverty; his love for the thankless young profligate, his nephew; the performance of the Choral Symphony--of that great adagio ‘in which we discern the slowly stalking movement of a god!’ ‘When it was over,’ Adrienne went on, ‘the audience were almost mad with rapture and delight, and the applause was deafening--thundering--it resounded through and through the great room! the master still stood with his baton in his hand, his back to the audience, till one of the vocalists gently turned him round, and he saw them all--how they were wild with pleasure and emotion; _he_ had thus moved them by his heavenly music to ‘joy,’ and he had heard no sound of it all.’ She paused. It was the life which she most loved in all truth or poetry; to her Beethoven’s sufferings were as actual as his genius or his grandeur. She saw Harry look at her with an expression which told her that he too understood, and she went on to the end--told of the bitter loneliness of those last years, that death in harmony with the life--that passing away of the Titan soul in the sublime music of the spring thunderstorm, and then she was silent. Harry looked at her for a moment, started up, and took her hand. ‘Thank you, miss,’ said he, and left the house. ‘Eh, Miss Blisset,’ said Mary, wiping her eyes, ‘you’re like no one else as ivver I heerd tell on afore. You’ve done a kindness to yon poor lad, such as he never had yet.’