"Oh, his father would have been in earnest, I have no doubt, in any affection; but I doubt if he was ever tremendously in love with Lady Emily. She is all that is sweet and dear in her frank homely way, but not a person to inspire a _grande passion_. Allan's father must have loved and lost in his early youth. There is a shade of melancholy in his voice and manner--nothing gloomy or dismal--but just that touch of seriousness which tells of deep thoughts. He is a most interesting man. I wish you could have seen him while he was at Beechhurst. I fear he will never leave Fendyke again." Mrs. Wornock sighed and sat silent, while Suzette went to the piano and played a short fugue by their favourite Sebastian Bach--played with tender touch, lengthening out every slow passage in her pensive reverie. There had been no more concertante duets. Geoffrey had entreated her to go on with their mutual study of De Beriot and the older composers, Corelli, Tartini, and the rest; but she had obstinately refused. "The music is difficult and tiring," she said. This was her first excuse. "We will play simpler music--the lightest we can find. There are plenty of easy duets." "Please don't think me capricious if I confess that I don't care about playing with the violin. It takes too much out of one. I am too anxious." "Why should you be anxious? I am not going to be angry or disagreeable at your _brioches_--should you make any." She still refused, lightly but persistently; and he saw that she had made up her mind. "I begin to understand," he said, with an offended air; and there was never any further talk of Suzette as an accompanist. Geoffrey was seldom at home in the daytime after this refusal, and life at the Manor dropped back into the old groove. Mrs. Wornock and Suzette spent some hours of every day together; and, now that the weather often made the garden impossible, the organ and piano afforded their chief occupation and amusement. Suzette was enthusiastic, and pleased with her own improvement under her friend's guidance. It was not so much tuition as sympathy which the elder woman gave to the younger. Suzette's musical talent, since she left her convent, had been withering in an atmosphere of chilling indifference. Her father liked to be played to sleep after dinner; but he hardly knew one air from another, and he called everything his daughter played Rubinstein. "Wonderful fellow that Rubinstein!" he used to say. "There seems no end to his compositions; and, to my notion, they've only one fault--they're all alike."