Sir Gilbert, for his part, was well satisfied that his cousin should make the Chase her home for as long as it might suit her convenience to do so. That he would feel her departure as a loss whenever it should take place, he began to realise more clearly the longer she stayed. She was capital company; never otherwise than lively and in good spirits, not a bit in awe of him, and imbued with a sufficiency of the combative element to make her always ready to administer that pinch of contradiction which men like the Baronet need to put them on their mettle. Without any design or set intention on her part, Ethel had become a great favourite with the old man. As we know, the Baronet had had several sons, but no daughter, and all unwittingly Ethel had slipped into a vacant niche in his heart, of the existence of which he had heretofore been only dimly aware. In Ethel’s singing and playing he found something that pleased him exceedingly. And when in some neglected corner she found a heap of old music which had belonged to, and bore the signature of, the first Lady Clare; and when, one evening, without saying anything to him, she ventured to play some of them; and, when he recognised them—voices from the tomb, as it were, silent for thirty long years—his delight was touching to behold. After that Ethel played and sang to him every evening, when he would sit with closed eyes, an elbow resting on either arm of his big easy-chair, and the fingertips of one hand pressed against those of the other, while an expression of great peace and contentment would gradually steal over his grand old features. “I can’t tell what it is, Louisa, that draws me so to that girl,” he remarked one day to Lady Pell. “It’s not her good looks, though they are undeniable; and it’s not her musical abilities, admirable as they are; it’s a charm, a something altogether indefinable and elusive, to which, if I were to try for an hour, I don’t think I could give its proper name. Both her eyes and her voice seem to haunt me; it is as if I had seen the one and heard the other in some prior state of existence. At times they affect me in the strangest possible way.” “I don’t wonder at your being taken by Ethel Thursby,” returned Lady Pell. “She is a dear girl, and I should like to have kept her with me always; but her aunts would only lend her to me for a time. In one sense I shall be quite sorry when Beilby, my ordinary companion, is well enough to resume her duties.” “You must not let her go yet awhile, Louisa. And yet, the longer she stays, the harder it will seem to part from her when the time comes.” “There is some one besides you and me, unless I am very much mistaken, who will find it harder still to part from her when the time comes.” “And who may that be, pray?” “That very nice secretary of yours, Mr. Everard Lisle.” “Lisle! You don’t mean to say——” “I mean to say that he’s over head and ears in love with Ethel Thursby.” “You astonish me. I have remarked nothing.”