"Certainly," he answered, rising and attending her. It was the hardest thing she could have asked of him, but Lance was very unselfish. He put down the throb of pain that rose at the remembrance of the new songs he and Lily had been wont to practice at the same piano, and turned the leaves with a steady hand while her fingers flew over the keys. But one thing she had asked more than once. It was that he should sing with her. This he always quietly declined to do. "That is rude of you," she would say, in a voice of chagrin. "Your tenor is so perfectly splendid, why should you refuse?" "I shall never sing again," he would answer, quietly but firmly, and no persuasion on her part could induce him to change his mind. It was agony for him to stand there and turn the leaves, looking down upon that dark head instead of the golden one he had been wont to gaze upon so fondly. When the face was lifted with a smile to his, and instead of Lily's soft, blue eyes he met the gaze of the black ones, his heart thrilled with pain. Perhaps she guessed it, but she kept him there all the same, thinking that time would blunt the keenness of his remembrance and teach him to adore the brunette as fondly as he had loved the blonde. She played at him, she sung at him, lifting her passionate glance to his whenever some appropriate sentiment in the song seemed to warrant such expressiveness. Lance never dreamed of the reason for her pantomime. He had seen the same thing practiced by ladies in society. He deemed it a harmless kind of flirting, but never thought of responding to it. She kept him there perhaps an hour patiently waiting on her pleasure, and passing his opinion only as it was called for on the various pieces she was practicing. At last, to his great relief, she grew weary of her amusement, and left the piano. "Come and read to me, Lance," said she, with a pretty tone of proprietorship in him; "I am tired of the music, I do not like the songs. There is not a passable one in the whole selection." She threw herself down half-reclining on a rich divan and settled herself to listen. Lance selected a volume of Tennyson, and seating himself near her, began to read quite at random the celebrated poem of Lady Clara Vere De Vere. "Lady Clara Vere De Vere, Of me you shall not win renown; You thought to break a country heart For pastime ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired; The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to be desired." "Oh! no more of that," she cried, as he paused after the first verse. "I have never fancied that poem--try something else." Patiently he turned the leaves and came upon the exquisite little poem of "Edward Gray"--a dainty bit of versification admired by all women. "This will please her fancy," he thought, and began again: