“Come, Judy,” said her aunt.

“You don’t want me, I am sure, auntie.”

“I do, Judy, really.  You mustn’t be cross to us because uncle has been cross to you.  Uncle is not well, you know, and isn’t a bit like himself; and you know you should not have meddled with his machinery.”

And Miss Oldcastle put her arm round Judy, and kissed her.  Whereupon Judy jumped from her seat, threw her book down, and ran to one of the several doors that opened from the room.  This disclosed a little staircase, almost like a ladder, only that it wound about, up which we climbed, and reached a charming little room, whose window looked down upon the Bishop’s Basin, glimmering slaty through the tops of the trees between.  It was panelled in small panels of dark oak, like the room below, but with more of carving.  Consequently it was sombre, and its sombreness was unrelieved by any mirror.  I gazed about me with a kind of awe.  I would gladly have carried away the remembrance of everything and its shadow.—­Just opposite the window was a small space of brightness formed by the backs of nicely-bound books.  Seeing that these attracted my eye—­

“Those are almost all gifts from my uncle,” said Miss Oldcastle.  “He is really very kind, and you will not think of him as you have seen him to-day ?”

“Indeed I will not,” I replied.

My eye fell upon a small pianoforte.

“Do sit down,” said Miss Oldcastle.—­“You have been very ill, and I could do nothing for you who have been so kind to me.”

She spoke as if she had wanted to say this.

“I only wish I had a chance of doing anything for you,” I said, as I took a chair in the window.  “But if I had done all I ever could hope to do, you have repaid me long ago, I think.”

“How?  I do not know what you mean, Mr Walton.  I have never done you the least service.”

“Tell me first, did you play the organ in church that afternoon when—­after—­before I was taken ill—­I mean the same day you had—­a friend with you in the pew in the morning ?”

I daresay my voice was as irregular as my construction.  I ventured just one glance.  Her face was flushed.  But she answered me at once.

“I did.”

“Then I am in your debt more than you know or I can tell you.”

“Why, if that is all, I have played the organ every Sunday since uncle was taken ill,” she said, smiling.

“I know that now.  And I am very glad I did not know it till I was better able to bear the disappointment.  But it is only for what I heard that I mean now to acknowledge my obligation.  Tell me, Miss Oldcastle,—­what is the most precious gift one person can give another?”

She hesitated; and I, fearing to embarrass her, answered for her.