“Indeed, sir, I cannot see how you could have done otherwise,” said Aurelia, who could not bear to hear his tone of self-reproach.

“My amiable visitor!” he exclaimed, as though recalled to a sense of her presence.  “Excuse the absence of mind which has inflicted on you the selfish murmurs of the old recluse.  Tell me how you prospered with my cousins, whom I remember as sprightly maidens.  Phoebe had somewhat of the prude, Delia of the coquette.”

“I could imagine what you say of Mistress Phoebe, sir, better than of Mistress Delia.”

“Had they any guests to meet you?”

“A Mrs. Hunter, sir, from Brentford, a doctor’s wife I suppose.”

“You are right.  She was a cousin of theirs on the other side of the house, a loud-voiced buxom lass, who was thought to have married beneath here when she took Dr. Hunter; but apparently they have forgiven her.”

Mr. Belamour was evidently much interested and amused by Aurelia’s small experiences and observations, such as they were.  In spite of the sense of past omission which had been aroused by his nephew’s visit, it had evidently raised his spirits, for he laughed when Aurelia spiced her descriptions with a little playful archness, and his voice became more cheery.

So, too, it was on the ensuing evening when Aurelia, to compensate for the last day’s neglect, came primed with three or four pages of the conversation between Priam and Achilles, which she rehearsed with great feeling, thinking, like Pelides himself, of her own father and home.  It was requited with a murmured “Bravo,” and Mr. Belamour then begged of her, if she were not weary, to favour him with the Nightingale Song, Jumbo as usual accompanying her with his violin.  At the close there was again a “Bravo!  Truly exquisite!” in a tone as if the hermit were really finding youth and life again.  Once more at his request, she sang, and was applauded with even more fervour, with a certain tremulous eagerness in the voice.  Yet there was probably a dread of the excitement being too much, for this was followed by “Thank you, kind songstress, I could listen for ever, but it is becoming late, and I must not detain you longer.”

She found herself handed out of the room, with somewhat curtailed good nights, although nine o’clock, her usual signal, had not yet struck.  When she came into the lamplit hall, Jumbo was grinning and nodding like a maniac, and when she asked what was the matter, he only rolled his eyes, and said, “Missie good!  Mas’r like music!”

The repressed excitability she had detected made her vaguely nervous (not that she would have so called herself), and as the next day was the blank Sunday, she appeased and worked off her restlessness by walking with the children to Sedhurst church.  It was the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, and the preacher, who had caught somewhat of the fire of Wesley and Whitfield, preached a sermon which arrested her attention,