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this would never do, and that they couldn’t imagine any good could come of it, and they hadn’t expected Miss Lauder would turn out that sort of girl. Poor Alice was really very far from wishing to be that sort of person. She liked playing with Campbell, mainly because he had a musician’s fellow-feeling in his soul, and also because it was fun to take him away from the leading lady, who had treated her with very scant politeness. Alice knew very well that she had only to touch the keys and Campbell’s black head would appear beside her, just as surely as the “cold crowned snake” yields to the immemorial wisdom of the charmer; and it cannot be denied that she liked using her power when the mood was on her. But there was not the shadow of what we diplomatically call love-making in the hours they passed together, and the critical little world which reviews all our actions and motives gratis in the liberal free-press of gossip would have found very little to condemn could it have overheard the innocent “music-shop” of these two enthusiasts, as the stars slowly changed their places in the azure above, and the ship flew with foam-winged sandals over the azure plain below towards the snow-laden Old World and the winter fields of England just breaking into chilly premonitory impulses of spring.