"Well, there are many different kinds of fools, but Fred Mostyn is the worst I ever heard tell of. Does he not know that the girl is engaged?"
"Knows it as well as I do."
"None of our family were ever fools before, and I hope Fred will come round quickly. Do you think Dora noticed the impression she made?"
"Yes, Aunt Ruth noticed Dora; and Ruth says Dora 'turned the arrow in the heart wound' all the evening."
"What rubbish you are talking! Say in good English what you mean."
"She tried every moment they, were together to make him more and more in love with her."
"What is her intention? A girl doesn't carry on that way for nothing."
"I do not know. Dora has got beyond me lately. And, grandmother, I am not troubling about the event as it regards Dora or Fred or Basil Stanhope, but as it regards Ethel."
"What have you to do with it?"
"That is just what I want to have clearly understood. Aunt Ruth told me that father and you would be disappointed if I did not marry Fred."
"Well?"
"I am sorry to disappoint you, but I never shall marry Fred Mostyn. Never!"
"I rather think you will have to settle that question with your father, Ethel."
"No. I have settled it with myself. The man has given to Dora all the love that he has to give. I will have a man's whole heart, and not fragments and finger-ends of it."
"To be sure, that is right. But I can't say much, Ethel, when I only know one side of the case, can I? I must wait and hear what Fred has to say. But I like your spirit and your way of bringing what is wrong straight up to question. You are a bit Yorkshire yet, whatever you think gets quick to your tongue, and then out it comes. Good girl, your heart is on your lips."
They talked the afternoon away on this subject, but Madam's last words were not only advisory, they were in a great measure sympathetic. "Be straight with yourself, Ethel," she said, "then Fred Mostyn can do as he likes; you will be all right."
She accepted the counsel with a kiss, and then drove to the Holland House for her father. He was not waiting, as Ruth had supposed he would be, but then she was five minutes too soon. She sent up her card, and then let her eyes fall upon a wretched beggar man who was trying to play a violin, but was unable by reason of hunger and cold. He looked as if he was dying, and she was moved with a great pity, and longed for her father to come and give some help. While she was anxiously watching, a young man was also struck with the suffering on the violinist's face. He spoke a few words to him, and taking the violin, drew from it such strains of melody, that in a few moments a crowd had gathered within the hotel and before it. First there was silence, then a shout of delight; and when it ceased the player's voice thrilled every heart to passionate patriotism, as he sang with magnificent power and feeling-There is not a spot on this wide-peopled earth So dear to our heart as the Land of our Birth, etc.