“What do his people say to it all?” asked Leo. “Lee-Harrison’s? Oh, I believe they take it very sensibly. They say it’s only Bertie,” answered Reuben, rising and holding out his hand to his uncle, who sauntered in from the card-room. He was a short, stout, red-haired man, closely resembling his daughter, and at the present moment looked annoyed. The play was high and he had been losing heavily. “Let’s have some music, Leo,” he said, flinging himself into an arm-chair at some distance from the young people. Rose, who was a skilled musician, went over to the piano, and Leopold took his violin from its case. Reuben moved closer to Judith, and, under cover of the violin tuning, they exchanged a few words. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to get back.” “You look all the better for your trip. But you must take care and not overdo it again. It’s bad policy.” “It is almost impossible not to.” “But those committees and meetings and things” (she smiled), “surely they might be cut down?” “They are often very useful, indirectly, to a man in my position,” answered Reuben, who had no intention of saying anything cynical. There was a good deal of genuine benevolence in his nature, and an almost insatiable energy. He took naturally to the modern forms of philanthropy: the committees, the classes, the concerts and meetings. He found indeed that they had their uses, both social and political; higher motives for attending them were not wanting; and he liked them for their own sake besides. Out-door sports he detested; the pleasures of dancing he had exhausted long ago; the practice of philanthropy provided a vent for his many-sided energies. The tuning had come to an end by now, and the musicians had taken up their position. Immediately silence fell upon the little audience, broken only by the click of counters, the crackle of a bank-note in the room beyond; and the sound of Ernest’s solitaire balls as they dropped into their holes. Mrs. Leuniger, at the first notes of the tuning, had stolen in and taken up a position near the door; Esther had moved to a further corner of the room, where she lay buried in a deep lounge. Then, all at once, the music broke forth. The great, vulgar, over-decorated room, with its garish lights, its stifling fumes of gas, was filled with the sound of dreams; and over the keen faces stole, like a softening mist, a far-away air of dreamy sensuousness. The long, delicate hands of the violinist, the dusky, sensitive face, as he bent lovingly over the instrument, seemed to vibrate with the strings over which he had such mastery. The voice of a troubled soul cried out to-night in Leo’s music, whose accents even the hard brilliance of his accompanist failed to drown. As the bow was drawn across the strings for the last time, Ernest’s solitaire board fell to the ground with a crash, the little balls of Venetian glass rolling audibly in every direction.