Now, then, young gentlemen, choose your partners!\' Mr. Plantagenet murmured with a bland and inane smile. (\'Strike up the violin, Maud!\' aside.) \'Bow, and fall into places. Eight bars before beginning. No, not yet, Miss Tradescant. Explain to this young lady, if you please, Miss Tudor, that she must always wait eight bars—eight bars exactly—before she begins to chasser. That\'s right. Just so! Advance in couples—right, left—right, left—right, left—down the middle. Very nicely done, indeed: very nicely, very nicely. Now!—yes—that\'s it. Change hands, and over again!\'

A year and more had passed, and Mr. Plantagenet\'s face bore distincter signs than ever of his ruling passion. It was coarse and red under the bland exterior. Maud watched him intently now on the morning of lesson days to see he didn\'t slink away unobserved into the bar of the White Horse before the appointed hour for the meeting in the Assembly Rooms. Once let him cross the threshold of the inn, except to enter the big hall where he received his pupils, and all was up with him. On such occasions Maud was compelled with grief and shame to stick a notice on the door: \'Mr. Plantagenet is indisposed to-day, and will be unable to meet his usual classes.\' Nobody else ever knew what agony those notices cost the poor shrinking girl; but on the next appointed afternoon Mr. Plantagenet would be at his place again as if nothing had happened, and would murmur plaintively, with one hand on his left breast and the other on the bow of his faithful violin:

\'My old complaint, ladies and gentlemen—my old complaint! I suffer so much from my heart. I regret I was unable to receive you on Wednesday.\' Everybody in Chiddingwick knew quite well the real nature of Mr. Plantagenet\'s \'old complaint,\' but he was an institution of the place, and everybody pretended to believe in it and to sympathize with him.

On this particular day, however, in the middle of November, Mr. Plantagenet seemed even more consequential and more dignified than usual, if such a thing were possible. He received Lady Agatha\'s little girls with princely condescension. Maud, who stood by trembling, and watching him with dismay, as he fiddled with a will on his well-tried violin, wondered to herself, with a mute feeling of terror in her heart, what on earth could have put her father into such visible good humour. She didn\'t discover the secret till the end of the lesson. Then Mr. Plantagenet, rising with great importance and a conscious smirk, observed in his suavest and most professional tone:

\'I am sorry to say, young ladies and gentlemen—and you, Miss Tudor—I won\'t be able to give the usual lessons next Tuesday and Wednesday. The fact of the matter is, I shall be away from Chiddingwick. It doesn\'t often happen that I take a holiday; but on this occasion I shall be away from Chiddingwick. Long and close attention to the duties of a harassing and wearisome task has undermined my constitution; you can sympathize with my feelings, and next week I propose to give myself a well-earned repose in order to visit my dear son at the University of Oxford.\'

It was a perfect bombshell. To Maud, sitting by wearily, with her small violin clasped in her bloodless hands, the announcement came like a thunderbolt. He was going to Oxford! She turned deadly pale at once, and clutched the bow of her instrument with a spasmodic action. Mary Tudor, sitting near, noticed the pallor on her cheek, and guessed the cause of it instantly. The two girls looked up; for a second their eyes met, then Maud let hers drop suddenly. Though on that one dearest point Dick had never taken her into his confidence, Maud had guessed the whole truth during last Christmas vacation, and if anything could make the cup of her bitterness even bitterer than it was, \'twas the thought that Dick\'s friend, Dick\'s future wife, perhaps, should see and understand the full depths of her misery.

Mary had tact enough and feeling enough, however, not to press her sympathy upon the poor wounded creature. With a hasty side-glance she hurried her charges out of the room as quick as she could, and motioned to the other governesses to do the same for theirs with all possible expedition. Two minutes later the big hall was fairly cleared, and father and daughter stood face to face in silence.

If Maud had followed only the prompting of her own personal feelings, she would have sat down where she was, covered her face with her hands, and cried long and bitterly.

But her sense of duty towards her father prevented her from so giving way. She couldn\'t bear to let him see how deeply, for Dick\'s sake, she dreaded the idea of his going to Oxford. All she could do was to look up at him with a scared white face, and murmur in a terrified, half-articulate tone: \'Oh, father, father, you never told me of this! What on earth do you mean by it?\'

Mr. Plantagenet eyed his daughter askance out of the corner of his eyes. He was more afraid of Maud than of anyone else on earth; in point of fact, she was his domestic keeper. But he tried to assume his jaunty, happy-go-lucky air, for all that.

\'Well, my dear,\' he said, examining the strings of his fiddle with profound attention, \'I haven\'t had a holiday for a very long time, away from Chiddingwick, and I\'m tired with the duties—the duties of my very exacting profession—and I felt I needed a change, and I haven\'t been up to Oxford since your brother Richard entered into residence as a member of the University. Now, I naturally feel a desire to see my son in that position in life which a Plantagenet ought to occupy. And so, the long and the short of it is,\' Mr. Plantagenet went on, shuffling about, and glancing up at her anxiously, \'the long and the short of it is, as you heard me inform my class just now, I think next week of allowing myself the luxury of a trip to Oxford.\'

Maud rose and seized his arm. His grandeur and indefiniteness positively alarmed her. Did he think she would be taken in by such grandiose words?

\'Now, father,\' she said boldly, \'that sort of talk won\'t do between us two, you know, at a serious crisis. This is important, very. You must tell me quite plainly what you mean by it all. Does Dick know you\'re coming, and why do you want to go to him?\'

Mr. Plantagenet, thus attacked, produced from his pocket a rather dirty silk handkerchief, an............