Miss Graham seated herself at the piano, and played a few bars with an absent and somewhat pensive air. "That is a mournful melody," said Douglas. "I don't think I ever heard it before." "Indeed!" murmured Lydia; "and yet I think it is very generally known. The air is pretty, is it not? But the words are ultra-sentimental." And then she began to sing softly-- "I do not ask to offer thee A timid love like mine; I lay it, as the rose is laid, On some immortal shrine." "I think the words are rather pretty," said Douglas. "Do you?" murmured Miss Graham; and then she stopped suddenly, looking downward, with one of those conscious blushes which were always at her command. There was a pause. Douglas Dale stood by the music-stand, listlessly turning over a volume of songs. Lydia was the first to break the silence. "Why did you not come to see us sooner, Mr. Dale?" she asked. "You promised me you would come." "I have been too much engaged to come," answered Douglas. This reply sounded almost rude; but to Lydia this unpolished manner seemed only the result of extreme shyness, and, indeed, embarrassment, which to her appeared proof positive of her intended victim's enthralment. Her eyes grew bright with a glance of triumph. "I shall win," she thought to herself; "I shall win." "Have you really wished to see me?" asked Douglas, after another pause. "I did indeed wish to see you," she murmured, in tremulous tones. "Indeed!" said Douglas, in a tone that might mean astonishment, delight, or anything else. "Well, Miss Graham, that was very kind of you. I go out very little, and never except to the houses of intimate friends." "Surely you number us--my brother, I mean--among that privileged class," said Lydia, once more blushing bewitchingly. "I do, indeed," said Douglas Dale, in a candid, kind, unembarrassed tone, which, if she had been a little less under the dominion of that proverbially blinding quality, vanity, would have been the most discouraging of all possible tones, to the schemes which she had formed; "I never forget how high you stood in my poor brother's esteem, Miss Graham; indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, I thought there was a much warmer feeling than that, on his part."