A deep flush overspread Gilbert Lloyd's usually pallid cheeks, but Gertrude's expression did not change in the slightest degree. Not a trace of the faintest emotion, even of curiosity, could be seen in her face. The conductor of the orchestra, just before he left her in front of the audience, addressed some remark to her; and as she replied, Gilbert noticed that her lips were curling with a slight sneer--an expression which he fancied he understood, when the band commenced to play an air which even he, all unmusical as he was, recognised as "Home, sweet home." But she never looked at him again during the song, which she sung even more sweetly than the first, and with a deep pathos that roused the audience to enthusiasm. Gilbert Lloyd kept his eyes fixed on her, never moving them for an instant; and as he marked the calm air with which she received the public applause, and the graceful ease of all her movements--as he saw how her face, always clear cut and classically moulded, had ripened in womanly beauty and intellectual expression--as he noticed the rounded elegance of her figure, the tasteful simplicity of her dress--and he noticed all these details down to the fit of her gloves and the colour of her bonnet-strings--he raged against himself for having been fool enough to relinquish the hold he once had on her. Could that hold be reëstablished? If he were again to have an opportunity--But while these thoughts were passing through his mind, Gertrude had finished her song and quitted the orchestra, and her glance had not fallen on him again.