“Why don’t you adopt them?” asked Helen mischievously.

“One can buy all the ancestors one wants to, nowadays,” laughed Mr. Harrison.  “I thought I’d make something more interesting out of it.  I’m not much of a judge of art, you know, but I thought if I ever went abroad I’d buy up some of the great paintings that one reads about—­some of the old masters, you know.”

“I’m afraid you’d find very few of them for sale,” said Helen, smiling.

“I’m not accustomed to fail in buying things that I want,” was the other’s reply.  “Are you fond of pictures?”

“Very much indeed,” answered the girl.  As a matter of fact, the mere mention of the subject opened a new kingdom to her, for she could not count the number of times she had sat before beautiful pictures and almost wept at the thought that she could never own one that was really worth looking at.  “I brought home a few myself,” she said to her companion,—­“just engravings, you know, half a dozen that I thought would please me; I mean to hang them around my music-room.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mr, Harrison.  “I have been thinking of fixing up such a place myself, you know.  I thought of extending the house on the side that has the fine view of the valley, and making part a piazza, and part a conservatory or music-room.”

“It could be both!” exclaimed the girl, eagerly.  “That would be the very thing; there ought not to be anything in a music-room, you know, except the piano and just a few chairs, and the rest all flowers.  The pictures ought all to be appropriate—­pictures of nature, of things that dance and are beautiful; oh, I could lose myself in such a room as that!” and Helen ran on, completely carried away by the fancy, and forgetting even Mr. Harrison for a moment.

“I have often dreamed of such a place,” she said, “where everything would be sympathetic; it’s a pity that one can’t have a piano taken out into the fields, the way I remember reading that Haydn used to do with his harpsichord.  If I were a violinist, that’s the way I’d do all my playing, because then one would not need to be afraid to open his eyes; oh, it would be fine—­”

Helen stopped; she was at the height of her excitement just then; and the climax came a moment afterwards.  “Miss Davis,” asked the man, “would you really like to arrange such a music-room?”

The tone of his voice was so different that the girl comprehended instantly; it was this moment to which she had been rushing with so much exultation; but when it came her heart almost stopped beating, and she gave a choking gasp.

“Would you really like it?” asked Mr. Harrison again, bending towards her earnestly.

“Why, certainly,” said Helen, making one blind and desperate effort to dodge the issue.  “I’ll tell you everything that is necessary.”

“That is not what I mean, Miss Davis!”

“Not?” echoed Helen, and she tried to look at him with her frank, open eyes; but when she saw his burning look, she could not; she dropped her eyes and turned scarlet.