heard you play that very accompaniment in the schoolroom, only putting in all the fiddle part with your right hand."
James looked furious.
Muriel found the music, put her own part on the stand, and handed the accompaniment timidly to her brother.
"I tell you I can't play it."
"James, why are you so cross ?" said Muriel, wholly perplexed, but speaking under her breath lest her mother should hear.
"I'm not cross, idiot," muttered James; "but I know I can't play the beastly thing, any more than you can. If you'd heard Kreisler play it, as I have, you wouldn't want to try."
"Of course I know I can't play it as well as he can." began Muriel, utterly bewildered.
Zella, who had been summoning up all her courage for the last few seconds, said with a beating heart: "Shall I try it, Muriel?" "But you don't know it, do you?" "I can read music," said Zella eagerly. She was exceedingly proud of her ability to read music at sight, and longed for an opportunity of showing her relatives that she also was not ungifted. But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans
said very decidedly:?
"Nonsense, dear! I expect it is much too difficult for you to read without a great many wrong notes, which Aunt Marianne wouldn't like at all; and, besides, you haven't been practising lately, and one ought never to play a piece unless one has been having a good hour of scales and exercises first."
Zella flushed scarlet.
"I can read anything," she muttered defiantly and with some elasticity of statement.
"Don't boast, dear; it is a very bad habit, and not quite truthful, either," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans placidly.
"Now, Muriel. Are you ready, dear ?"
"I can't play it," James once more remarked obstinately.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans gave her husband the look which he knew to mean that there are moments when the authority of a gentleman is needed to supplement a mother's influence.
He cleared his throat nervously and said: "Come, come, my boy. We don't pay extra for your piano lessons only to hear that you can't play a piece which your little cousin says she could manage at first sight."
The remark, intended facetiously, roused Zella's wrath as well as James's, but the latter only said gruffly, "Come on, then, Muriel," and opened the music.
Muriel was nervous, and played worse than usual. Her brother kept down the loud pedal throughout, and released it with a bang as he crashed on to the final chord.
"There! you see it wasn't so difficult. You would play it quite nicely with a little practice," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
"I think I was a little out of tune," murmured Muriel nervously.
"About time you found it out too," was James's muttered comment, as he flung himself into a chair next to Zella's.
"Are you fond of music ?" she asked in an undertone. "Yes/' he said briefly. "Not that sort, though." "That wasn't music," Zella remarked calmly. He hoped to excite in making the remark.
It certainly wasn't. I say, do you play a lot?"
"A good deal," said Zella easily.
"Why haven't you played to us ?"
"I—I haven't been practising. Besides," she could not resist adding, " I haven't been asked."
"I'd have asked you fast enough, if I'd known you were any good. It's too late now, just when I'm going away."
"Are you sorry you're going?" she asked, half mischievously.
"No," said James gruffly. "It's heresy to say so, of course. Home, sweet Home, and all the rest of the sickening tosh. As a matter of fact, Harrow's a very decent place, though they're a bit too keen on games for my taste."
"Oh," cried Zella eagerly, "I do so agree with you. I hate games."
"Girls' games are rot, anyhow," said the mannerless James.
"Yes, I suppose they are."
Zella's idea of making herself agreeable at this time was to agree with any and every opinion offered her.
looked at her with the renewed
"Zella," said her Aunt Marianne's voice, "it is bedtime, dear. Run along with Muriel."
It was a cause of never-ending resentment to Zella that her aunt should so frequently tell her to "run."
She rose very slowly, said her good-nights, and moved towards the door with some dignity.
"Don't dawdle like that, dear," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. "Jimmy, you must stop and have a little talk with father and mother, as it is your last evening."
The next morning James went back to school, and Muriel's governess, Miss Vincent, returned to her duties.
Zella missed James, in whom she thought she had detected occasional flashes of a kindred spirit, and the monotonous life of regular lessons for her and Muriel seemed unutterably dreary to the spoilt little only child.
Her lessons at Villetswood had been an occasional hour of French reading with her father, music with her mother, and two hours' English in the morning under the tuition of the Rector's admiring daughter, whose nearest approach to criticism had always been, "You know, Zella dear, you have very great abilities, if you would make the best of them."
Miss Vincent made no mention whatever of Zella's abilities, but was eloquent on the subject of her extreme backwardness, and she found herself easily surpassed by Muriel at almost all their lessons.
Zella, who thought herself clever and Muriel very stupid, was angry and mortified; but she lacked the faculty of perseverance, and remained unable to demonstrate her superiority except on the rare occasions when some out-of-the-way piece of information came into question, when she could draw upon her fund of miscellaneous reading for supplying it.
At the end of six weeks she was miserable and homesick.
A longing for the old days at Villetswood, that would never return, came upon her, and the passion of the past obsessed the precocious child of fourteen.
She cried herself to sleep, as she had done during the first week or two after her mother's death, and grew pale and heavy-eyed. .
Everything was hateful : the daily lessons, where she toiled over sums and learnt dates that Muriel had mastered; three years ago; the schoolroom meals, when Miss Vincent and Muriel talked British French, and began every sentence with "Esker " ; the daily walks along the muddy high-road, and the evenings in the drawing-room, when Muriel and she played draughts or halma until bedtime.
Zella resolved to go home. A vague instinct that Villetswood without her mother's laughing, loving presence would be different, with the gladness and freedom gone from it, did not deter her.
At Villetswood was her father, who must surely become again, some day, his kindly, merry self. At Villetswood all the servants were her friends, and would be glad to welcome her again, and
