So the time had worn away at the musician’s home. Margery, respectful as ever in her manner, assiduously waited upon the little girl, who received all her attentions gratefully, and never voluntarily made a single demand. But there had passed a change over the old servant also. From her usually quiet ways she had become restless, as if there might be something upon her mind that rendered her constantly uneasy, or from which she was ineffectually trying to free herself. If she were sour or cross in disposition, as all the scholars used to tell, she had never shown it to the little orphan. She watched the child with a strange devotion. She would follow her about the house at a distance, and, if the little girl for a time sat down upon the veranda, Margery, too, farther off, would sit there with her sewing, or embrace that opportunity to trim the woodbine, and once or twice she had even found an excuse to intrude herself for a moment in the parlor. Every evening, when she put the little girl to bed, Margery, with a strange, expectant look upon her face, would linger about the room long after her charge had fallen into a peaceful sleep. Then, when she had retired, often in the very middle of the night, she would suddenly waken from a sound slumber, spring out of bed, and, before she was thoroughly conscious, discover herself standing beside the child, with her head bent down in a listening position, and every nerve strained to catch the slightest sound. Immediately she would rundown stairs into the music-rooms, only to find them both deserted and the instruments closed. With a white countenance she would return, pause once more in the child’s room, and then lie down again, saying to herself, for the hundredth time,— “It must be mere fancy. I have been dreaming.” There was no element of superstition in Margery, but this incident would recur over and over, night after night, until she began to ask herself if, before she had reached sixty years, she was already losing her mind, and this the first fancy of a disordered imagination. It was strange, she told herself, that she should dream the same thing so often, and every time it should be so vivid, for she heard a strain of music as distinctly as she ever heard a sound in her life, though it was not like the piano, organ, or, indeed, any instrument. And, though vivid, it was so evanescent it made her doubt the veracity of her senses. Then, too, it never came from down stairs, or out-of-doors, but always seemed apparently to emanate from the bedside of the little child, though, as soon as she had stooped to listen, it was gone, and the reign of silence again left supreme. Once or twice, even during the day, when standing beside the little Alice, Margery had heard, or thought she heard, a sudden waft of this soft melody sweep by her, but so fleeting that it was gone before she could catch her breath to listen, or be sure it was not simply all her own imagination.