“I should like to know where that fellow lives,” cried the cornet. “I don't know, I'm sure,” she said. “He lends money. Do you want any? I heard your sisters say something, one day. You can always have all that I have, you know.” A quick spirit of pity and honest kindness went through Wilfrid's veins and threatened to play the woman with his eyes, for a moment. He took her hand and pressed it. She put her lips to his fingers. “Once,” she continued, “when the Jew gentleman had left, I spoke to my father of his way with me, and then my father took me on his knee, and the things he told me of what that man felt for me made my mother come and tear me away to bed. I was obliged to submit to the Jew gentleman patting and touching me always. He used to crush my dreams afterwards! I know my voice was going. My father was so eager for me to please him, I did my best; but I felt dull, and used to sit and shake my head at my harp, crying; or else I felt like an angry animal, and could have torn the strings. “Think how astonished I was when my mother came to me to say my father had money in his pockets!--one pound, seventeen shillings, she counted: and he had not been playing! Then he brought home a new violin, and he said to me, 'I shall go; I shall play; I am Orphee, and dinners shall rise!' I was glad, and kissed him; and he said, 'This is Sandra's gift to me,' showing the violin. I only knew what that meant two days afterwards. Is a girl not seventeen fit to be married?” With this abrupt and singular question she had taken an indignant figure, and her eyes were fiery: so that Wilfrid thought her much fitter than a minute before.