‘What is it,’ inquired Mrs. Hood.  ’I daresay I could guess if I tried very hard.  Couldn’t you, Emily?’

‘Now then, Jerry, for the awful news,’ urged her sister.

‘No, you’ll have to tell, Jessie,’ said the other, giggling and blushing.

’Well, I suppose one of us must.  She’s been and engaged herself to Mr. Baldwin.  Of course we all knew—­’

‘Now, Jessie, you knew nothing of the kind!’

’Didn’t I, though!  Oughtn’t she to be ashamed of herself, at her age, Mrs. Hood!  I know what Emily’s opinion is; she’s simply disgusted.  Look at her, and see if she isn’t.’

The gabble of the two girls was worthy of the occasion their tongues went like mill-clappers.  Whilst her mother busied herself in preparing tea, Emily sat and listened; fortunately there was little need for her to talk.  To herself she seemed to be suffering a kind of trance, without detriment to her consciousness.  The chattering and grimacing girls appeared before her as grotesque unrealities, puppets animated in some marvellous way, and set to caricature humanity.  She tried to realise that one of them was a woman like herself, who had just consented to be a man’s wife; but it was impossible to her to regard this as anything but an aping of things which at other times had a solemn meaning.  She found herself gazing at Geraldine as one does at some singular piece of mechanism with a frivolous purpose.  And it was not only the individuals that impressed her thus; these two represented life and the world.  She had strange, cynical thoughts, imaginings which revolted her pure mind even whilst it entertained them.  No endeavour would shake off this ghastly clairvoyance.  She was picturing the scene of Geraldine’s acceptance of the offer of marriage; then her thoughts passed on to the early days of wedded life.  She rose, shuddering, and moved about the room; she talked to drive those images from her brain.  It did but transfer the sense of unreality to her own being.  Where was she, and what doing?  Had she not dreamed that a hideous choice had been set before her, a choice from which there was no escape, and which, whatever the alternative she accepted, would blast her life?  But that was something grave, earnest, and what place was there for either earnestness or gravity in a world where Geraldine represented womanhood wooed and about to be wedded?  There was but one way of stopping the gabble which was driving her frantic; she threw open the piano and began to play, to play the first music that came into her mind.  It was a passage from the Moonlight Sonata.  A few moments, and the ghosts were laid.  The girls still whispered together, but above their voices the pure stream of music flowed with gracious oblivion.  When Emily ceased, it was with an inward fervour of gratitude to the master and the instrument, To know that, was to have caught once more the point of view from which life had meaning.  Now let them chatter and mop and mow; the echo of that music still lived around.