The instrument was one of the number which are packed to suit all English tastes and may be taken for a rough sample of the jumble of them, where a danceless quadrille-tune succeeds a suicidal Operatic melody and is followed by the weariful hymn, whose last drawl pert polka kicks aside. Thus does the poor Savoyard compel a rich people to pay for their wealth. Not without pathos in the abstract perhaps do the wretched machines pursue their revolutions of their factory life, as incapable of conceiving as of bestowing pleasure: a bald cry for pennies through the barest pretence to be agreeable but Jane found it hard to be tolerant of them out of London, and this one affecting her invalid and Mrs. Adister must be dismissed. Wayland was growling; he had to be held by the collar. He spied an objectionable animal. A jerky monkey was attached to the organ; and his coat was red, his kepi was blue; his tailor had rigged him as a military gentleman. Jane called to the farm-wife. Philip assured her he was not annoyed. Jane observed him listening, and by degrees she distinguished a maundering of the Italian song she had one day sung to Patrick in his brother’s presence.

‘I remember your singing that the week before I went to India,’ said Philip, and her scarlet blush flooded her face.

‘Can you endure the noise?’ she asked him.

‘Con would say it shrieks “murder.” But I used to like it once.’

Mrs. Lappett came answering to the call. Her children were seen up the garden setting to one another with squared aprons, responsive to a livelier measure.

‘Bless me, miss, we think it so cheerful!’ cried Mrs. Lappett, and glanced at her young ones harmonious and out of mischief.

‘Very well,’ said Jane, always considerate for children. She had forgotten the racked Mrs. Adister.

Now the hymn of Puritanical gloom-the peacemaker with Providence performing devotional exercises in black bile. The leaps of the children were dashed. A sallow two or three minutes composed their motions, and then they jumped again to the step for lively legs. The similarity to the regimental band heading soldiers on the march from Church might have struck Philip.

‘I wonder when I shall see Patrick!’ he said, quickened in spite of himself by the sham sounds of music to desire changes and surprises.

Jane was wondering whether he could be a man still to brood tearfully over his old love.

She echoed him. ‘And I! Soon, I hope.’

The appearance of Mrs. Adister with features which were the acutest critical summary of the discord caused toll to be paid instantly, and they beheld a flashing of white teeth and heard Italian accents. The monkey saluted militarily, but with painful suggestions of his foregone drilling in the ceremony.

‘We are safe nowhere from these intrusions,’ Mrs. Adister said; ‘not on these hills!—and it must be a trial for the wretched men to climb them, that thing on their backs.’

‘They are as accustomed to it as mountain smugglers bearing packs of contraband,’ said Philip.

‘Con would have argued him out of hearing before he ground a second note,’ she resumed. ‘I have no idea when Con returns from his unexpected visit to Ireland.’

‘Within a fortnight, madam.’

‘Let me believe it! You have heard from him? But you are in the air! exposed! My head makes me stupid. It is now five o’clock. The air begins to chill. Con will never forgive me if you catch a cold, and I would not incur his blame.’

The eyes of Jane and Philip shot an exchange.

‘Anything you command, madam,’ said Philip.

He looked up and breathed his heaven of fresh air. Jane pitied, she could not interpose to thwart his act of resignation. The farmer, home for tea, and a footman, took him between them, crutched, while Mrs. Adister said to Jane: ‘The doctor’s orders are positive:—if he is to be a man once more, he must rest his back and not use his legs for months. He was near to being a permanent cripple from that fall. My brother Edward had one like it in his youth. Soldiers are desperate creatures.’

‘I think Mr. Adister had his fall when hunting, was it not?’ said Jane.

‘Hunting, my dear.’

That was rather different from a fall on duty before the enemy, incurred by severe exhaustion after sunstroke! …

Jane took her leave of Philip beside his couch of imprisonment in his room, promising to return in the early morning. He embraced her old dog Wayland tenderly. Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs.

Walking homeward she likewise gave Wayland a hug. She called him ‘dear old fellow,’ and questioned him of his fondness for her, warning him not to be faithless ever to the mistress who loved him. Was not her old Wayland as good a protector as the footman Mrs. Adister pressed her to have at her heels? That he was!

Captain Con’s behaviour grieved her. And it certainly revived an ancient accusation against his countrymen. If he cared for her so much, why had he not placed confidence in her and commissioned her to speak of his election to his wife? Irishmen will never be quite sincere!—But why had his cousin exposed him to one whom he greatly esteemed? However angry he might be with Con O’Donnell in his disapproval of the captain’s conduct, it was not very considerate to show the poor man to her in his natural colours. Those words: ‘The consolidation of the Union:’ sprang up. She had a dim remembrance of words ensuing: ‘ceremonies going at a funeral pace… on the highway to the solidest kind of union:’—Yes, he wrote: ‘I leave you to…’ And Captain Philip showed her the letter:

She perceived motives beginning to stir. He must have had his intention: and now as to his character!—Jane was of the order of young women possessing active minds instead of figured paste-board fronts, who see what there is to be seen about them and know what may be known instead of decorously waiting for the astonishment of revelations. As soon as she had asked herself the nature of the design of so honourable a man as Captain Philip in showing her his cousin’s letter, her blood spun round and round, waving the reply as a torch; and the question of his character confirmed it.

But could he be imagined seeking to put her on her guard? There may be modesty in men well aware of their personal attractions: they can credit individual women with powers of resistance. He was not vain to the degree which stupefies the sense of there being weight or wisdom in others. And he was honour’s own. By these lights of his character she read the act. His intention was… and even while she saw it accurately, the moment of keen perception was overclouded by her innate distrust of her claim to feminine charms. For why should he wish her to understand that he was no fortune-hunter and treated heiresses with greater reserve than ordinary women! How could it matter to him?

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