The First Violin

the Morning! How

ight her candle; the click of the catch as the blind rolled down. There was a door between her room and mine, and presently she passed it, and bearing a candle in her hand, stood in my presence. My sister was very beautiful, very proud. She was cleverer, stronger, more decided than I, or rather, while she had those qualities very strongly developed, I was almost without them. She always held her head up, and had one of those majestic figures which require no back-boards to teach them uprightness, no master of deportment to instill grace into th

she held, and the light also caught the crown of massive plaits which she w

ere, May,"

my subdue

you been a

ot matter

to Sir Peter Le Marchant. I saw yo

d y

which seemed to me frightful. "Worldly," I thought, was

di

ould be a little diff

not acc

as if she had not qu

said I, slightly

e you te

tru

eter h

heart would break. I had never quarreled with Adelaide before. No reconciliat

ition and circumstances. If not, it would be as well that you should do so now. Papa is fifty-five years old, and has three hundred a year. In the course of time he will die,

can

ion have we had? The village school-mistress could make us look very small in the matter of geography and hist

hing, Adelaide, and I will

had seventeen years of play and amusement, and now you behave like a baby. You refuse to endure a little discomfort, as the price of placing yourself and your family forever out of the reach of trouble and trial. Why, if you were Sir Peter's wife, you could do

spered, subdued for the moment, b

ve had to-night, in another year I would have been known and envied by hal

p for being tied to that man," said I, i

uppose no one else ever had to do what they did not like? Why did you not stop

. "How could I? I should die of shame at the very though

? And what if they did? With fifteen thou

ering my face with my hands. "Ad

's apparent unconsciousness of, or callousness to, the stabs she w

, remarking, with

if I could

Adelaide had grasped it; I felt as if she had taken my mind by the shoulders and shaken it roughly. I fastened bo

had always seemed to me so abundant for all occasions, were really Res Angusta