But Laura did not seem inclined to reply; she was counting the stitches in her crochet.  In the silence, Arnold took his leave.

He had no sooner reached his own room than he reproached himself for his sudden retreat.  Why had he not stayed, and tried to persuade the young lady to change her mind?  An engagement for the theatre with a cousin might have been easily postponed.  And he would like to have made her listen to some of his music.  He would have compelled her to listen.  He would have played something that would have stirred all the audience; but for her, it would have been like taking her back to her peril of the day before,—­she should have lived over again all its self-exaltation, all its triumph.

Laura meanwhile had laid down her work.

“I was stupid,” she said, “not to take that ticket.”

“I think you were,” said her aunt, “when we know so many people who would give their skins for a ticket.”

“It is not that,” said Laura; “but I didn’t want to go, till I saw the ticket going out of my grasp.  I have always had such dreary associations with concerts, since those I went to with Janet, last spring,—­long, dreary pieces that I couldn’t understand, interrupted by Italian songs that had more scream in them than music, and Janet flirting with her friends all the time.”

“I knew you didn’t like music,” said her aunt; “that was the only way I could get you out of the scrape, for it did seem impolite to refuse the ticket.  Of course an engagement to the theatre appeared a mere excuse, as long as Laura Keene plays every night now.”

“It was not a mere excuse with me,” said Laura; “I did not fancy the exchange.  But now I think I should like to know what his music is.  I wonder if it is at all like mine.”

“The music you make on the little old piano at home?” asked Mrs. Ashton; “that is sweet enough in that room, but I fancy it is different from his music.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that,” said Laura; “it is because the piano seems to say so little that I care so little for it.  The music I mean is what I hear, when, in a summer’s afternoon, I carry my book out into the barn to read as I lie on a bed of hay.  I don’t read, but I listen.  The cooing of the doves, the clatter even of the fowls in the barn-yard, the quiet noises, with the whisperings of the great elm, and the rustling of the brook in the field beyond,—­all this is the music I like to hear.  It puts me into delicious dreams, and stirs me, too, into strange longing.”

“Well, I doubt if our great musician can do all that.  Anyhow, he wouldn’t bring in the hens and chickens,” laughed Mrs. Ashton.

“But I should like to hear him, if he could show me what real music is,” said Laura, dreamily, as her hands fell on her work.

“Well, I am sorry,” said Mrs. Ashton, “and you might take my ticket:  you can, if you wish.  Only one concert is like another, and I dare say you would be disappointed, after all.  I told Mrs. Campbell I should certainly go to one of his concerts, and I suppose Mr. Ashton will hardly care for the expense of tickets, now we have had them presented to us.  And as I know that Mrs. Campbell is going to-night, she will see that I am there, so I should much prefer going tonight.  But then, Laura, if you do care so much about it”—­