It is an exquisite romance, and he sang it to perfection. To Mr. Bolton’s mind it brought, as well it might, remembrances thronging fast of youth and love, and of a time when he had been young, and when he had wandered through the lanes of Wellfield on his Saturday half-holiday, or for his Sunday out, with a girl on his arm, whose presence was his paradise. In short, Mr. Bolton soon, to his own profound astonishment, found tears stealing from his eyes. He was thinking of himself, and of his own far-back joys and sorrows; he was in a twilight land, where he had long been a stranger—a country which all of us know, and which yet none of us with bodily eyes have seen—the country which is illumined by ‘the light that never was on sea or land’—the country in which strange plants grow—dried flowers to wit, and locks of hair tied up with faded ribbons, and bundles of old letters—the kingdom of romance. Nita had changed her position; she had turned over on her side, with her face towards the sofa-back, so that it could not be seen. Her handkerchief was pressed against her mouth, her temples throbbed, her eyes were closed. She lay quite still, save that now and then a slight shiver shook her from her head to her feet. If it filled John Leyburn’s good honest heart with sweet, vague dreams which he had never known before, if it wafted her dry, business-like, prosaic father back into a nearly-forgotten land of faery and of dreams, what did it not do for her, attuned by nature as she was, to passion and romance? and how was she ever to find peace or freedom again? The last thing that Jerome sung was Zelter’s glorious song, _Infelice in tanto affani_. When he had finished it, when the last piercing, heart-breaking notes had died away, the despairing ‘Ho, perduto! Il mio tesoro! Tuttu—tuttu fini!’ he rose quickly from the piano, and closed it, observing: ‘I quite forgot myself. I am afraid I have been inflicting myself upon you.’ John Leyburn rose too. ‘What a lucky dog you are, Wellfield, to have that voice. Amongst more impressionable people than the English, you could charm hearts away with it, I am sure.’ ‘I do not understand music,’ observed Aunt Margaret, rising also, ‘and I am going.’ Mr. Bolton’s voice then came from afar, pedantic and particular as usual. ‘We are very much indebted to you, Mr. Wellfield. You have given us a very great treat, and I sincerely hope you will favour us in the same way on some other occasion.’ With which he pulled his lamp up to him again, and re-opened his book. ‘Nita, I am going. John will see me home,’ said Miss Shuttleworth, while John, stooping over Nita, remarked: ‘My child, you appear to have collapsed altogether.’ Aunt Margaret had gone upstairs to take off the green and yellow cap; Nita turned round, and sat up. Her face was pale, and there was an expression of suffering upon it.