duties with Mr. Heron’s curate, that Maynard might be constantly near Caterina, and watch over her progress.  She seemed to like him to be with her, to look uneasily for his return; and though she seldom spoke to him, she was most contented when he sat by her, and held her tiny hand in his large protecting grasp.  But Oswald, alias Ozzy, the broad-chested boy, was perhaps her most beneficial companion.  With something of his uncle’s person, he had inherited also his uncle’s early taste for a domestic menagerie, and was very imperative in demanding Tina’s sympathy in the welfare of his guinea-pigs, squirrels, and dormice.  With him she seemed now and then to have gleams of her childhood coming athwart the leaden clouds, and many hours of winter went by the more easily for being spent in Ozzy’s nursery.

Mrs. Heron was not musical, and had no instrument; but one of Mr. Gilfil’s cares was to procure a harpsichord, and have it placed in the drawing-room, always open, in the hope that some day the spirit of music would be reawakened in Caterina, and she would be attracted towards the instrument.  But the winter was almost gone by, and he had waited in vain.  The utmost improvement in Tina had not gone beyond passiveness and acquiescence—­a quiet grateful smile, compliance with Oswald’s whims, and an increasing consciousness of what was being said and done around her.  Sometimes she would take up a bit of woman’s work, but she seemed too languid to persevere in it; her fingers soon dropped, and she relapsed into motionless reverie.

At last—­it was one of those bright days in the end of February, when the sun is shining with a promise of approaching spring.  Maynard had been walking with her and Oswald round the garden to look at the snowdrops, and she was resting on the sofa after the walk.  Ozzy, roaming about the room in quest of a forbidden pleasure, came to the harpsichord, and struck the handle of his whip on a deep bass note.

The vibration rushed through Caterina like an electric shock:  it seemed as if at that instant a new soul were entering into her, and filling her with a deeper, more significant life.  She looked round, rose from the sofa, and walked to the harpsichord.  In a moment her fingers were wandering with their old sweet method among the keys, and her soul was floating in its true familiar element of delicious sound, as the water-plant that lies withered and shrunken on the ground expands into freedom and beauty when once more bathed in its native flood.

Maynard thanked God.  An active power was re-awakened, and must make a new epoch in Caterina’s recovery.

Presently there were low liquid notes blending themselves with the harder tones of the instrument, and gradually the pure voice swelled into predominance.  Little Ozzy stood in the middle of the room, with his mouth open and his legs very wide apart, struck with something like awe at this new power in ‘Tin-Tin,’ as he called her, whom he had been accustomed to think of as a playfellow not at all clever, and very much in need of his instruction on many subjects.  A genie soaring with broad wings out of his milkjug would not have been more astonishing.