"I thought she tried to bring it on?" said the confidante, anxious, above all things, to be sympathetic. "Well, she brought him to the Corfields, and let me know she had. I don't know why she did it. I suppose she wanted to get something out of him. Ah! _there_ he is!" And Letty stood up, smiling and beckoning, while Tressady's tall thin figure made its way along the central passage. "Horrid House! What made you so late?" she said, as he sat down between her and Miss Tulloch. George Tressady looked at her with delight. The shrewish contractions in the face, which had been very evident to Tully a few minutes before, had all disappeared, and the sharp slight lines of it seemed to George the height of delicacy. At sight of him colour and eyes had brightened. Yet at the same time there was not a trace of the raw girl about her. She knew very well that he had no taste for _ingenues_, and she was neither nervous nor sentimental in his company. "Do you suppose I should have stayed a second longer than I was obliged?" he asked her, smiling, pressing her little hand under pretence of taking her programme. The first notes of a new Brahms quartette mounted, thin and sweet, into the air. The musical portion of the audience, having come for this particular morsel, prepared themselves eagerly for the tasting and trying of it. George and Letty tried to say a few things more to each other before yielding to the general silence, but an old gentleman in front turned upon them a face of such disdain and fury they must needs laugh and desist. Not that George was unwilling. He was tired; and silence with Letty beside him was not only repose, but pleasure. Moreover, he derived a certain honest pleasure of a mixed sort from music. It suggested literary or pictorial ideas to him which stirred him, and gave him a sense of enjoyment. Now, as the playing flowed on, it called up delightful images in his brain: of woody places, of whirling forms, of quiet rivers, of thin trees Corot-like against the sky--scenes of pleading, of frolic, reproachful pain, dissolving joy. With it all mingled his own story, his own feeling; his pride of possession in this white creature touching him; his sense of youth, of opening life, of a crowded stage whereon his "cue" had just been given, his "call" sounded. He listened with eagerness, welcoming each fancy as it floated past, conscious of a grain of self-abandonment even--a rare mood with him. He was not absorbed in love by any means; the music spoke to him of a hundred other kindling or enchanting things. Nevertheless it made it doubly pleasant to be there, with Letty beside him. He was quite satisfied with himself and her; quite certain that he had done everything for the best. All this the music in some way emphasised--made clear. When it was over, and the applause was subsiding, Letty said in his ear: "Have you settled about the house?"