Miss Percy looked curiously at him, wondering why he should be so excited, or why he should care whether Louie sang on the stage or not. Neither could she define her own interest in a young girl she had known so short a time. She was passionately fond of music, and Louie’s voice had impressed her greatly. She was also rather fond of attending to other people’s business and having her own way about it. When once her mind was made up, she held on with a firm grip, and usually carried her point. With nothing in particular to do and plenty of money to spend, she would like to have a girl like Louie under her wing; it would help to divert her mind from a horror which was ever present with her when she was unoccupied, and she talked on of Paris and Marchesi and Europe generally as if it were settled that Louie was to go abroad with her in the autumn. “Consult your father and mother. I will see them another time, and remember, it is to be at my own expense. You will be my companion,” she said at last, as she arose to go. She had done the most of the talking, leaving Fred and Herbert quite out of the question; but the latter bided his time, knowing he should have a chance to express his opinion of Paris and Marchesi after the lady and Fred were gone. Fred was in no hurry to leave, but as he came with Miss Percy, he felt obliged to go when she did, and rather reluctantly said good-by, and left the field to Herbert, who began to air his opinion of the stage rather hotly and of Miss Percy meddling with what didn’t concern her. Foreign travel would be a good education in many respects, he said, and help to fit Louie for the position she would occupy as his wife, and on that account he would like to have her go abroad with Miss Percy, who knew a great many nice people both in London, Paris and Geneva, but he would not have her sing in public, and it would come to that if Miss Percy had her way. As it was, his father would be angry enough when he heard of the engagement, and if the stage were added, it might mean disinheritance. Then, what would they do? Stay in hum-drum Merivale and work for a living, he a clerk in her father’s bank, perhaps, and she on the road half the time with a troupe, leaving him to be spoken of, if he were mentioned at all, as Mrs. White’s husband; if, indeed, she did not take a stage name, and his identity be lost entirely. A good deal more he said of the same nature, with sundry suggestions with regard to Louie’s conduct as his promised wife, until she began to think that being engaged was not the state of bliss she had fancied it might be.