“Once too often!” the young man rose to his feet, speaking impetuously, forgetting all restraint “Twice too often, twenty times too often for my peace of mind, Lady Edith, and you know it! You know as well as I that Catlett cherished no more hopeless love for beauteous Mary Stuart than I for you. Nay, start not--your brother’s humble tutor presumes not too much! He but tells you what you deserve to hear! Lady Edith, you knew when you asked me to teach you to sing, when you stood at my side in the pride of your high-born beauty and mingled your heavenly voice with mine, what the end must be! Perhaps you planned it all, you fair coquette!” “Hush!” she cried, indignantly, but he went on, bitterly: “You knew while I sung that song that it was but the expression of my love for you, that the heart throbbing bitterly below, lent its passion to the voice. There was your triumph, trifler with human hearts! Not content with your higher lovers, you bent from your loftly sphere to ensnare an humble heart--one weak enough to own your charms, but too lowly even to dare to hope!” She stood still, confused, surprised, unable to speak one word in self-defense, her color rising and falling by turns, her lips half parted, the pale winter sunshine glinting through the stained-glass window crowning her golden head like a halo, making her seem not like a “trifler with human hearts,” but some fair saint or angel. And ere she could recover herself, Guy Winthrop bowed with cold deference and withdrew. Springing to the window, half-hidden behind the rich lace curtain, she watched the tall, straight figure striding swiftly down the elm avenue. Something--perhaps it was the red evening light shining on a waste of snow, or perhaps a tear--blurred the outlines of the fair winter landscape, and, sighing, she turned away. “Poor and proud!” faltered in a soft undertone from her lips. “Why, he has nothing in the world but his profession, yet he talks to me like a prince royal, upbraids me with my coquetry, and leaves me with cold disdain! Ah, my haughty lover, did you but know”--then she started and bit her lip as if not even to solitude would she whisper the secret trembling on that coral portal. “So the Minstrel’s Curse is like to be fulfilled again,” said a mocking voice behind her. She turned with a start, the rosy color flooding cheek and throat, but it was only old Katharine, her nurse, who was almost a century old, and in her dotage. There she sat, curled cozily behind the curtain that draped that odd little bay-window, and she had heard every word Guy Winthrop uttered. Lady Edith paled with indignation. “How came you there? How dared you listen?” she cried, and rushed away in a pet. Old Katharine hobbled slowly after her mistress, and found her sobbing on her silken couch.