On this, his first visit, he stayed for the evening and was installed as a friend of the family all over again. Although it was Sunday, and Hester’s ideas were a little strict as to religious proprieties, she received him cordially while her mother received him with a somewhat detached kindness. Falling into the old ways, he took his part in the hymns, anthems, and what other forms of sacred music followed the family tea. And so the evening passed without annoyance—partly because Cornelius was spending it with a friend.

The tone, expression, and power of Hester’s voice astonished Vavasor once again. After she had extemporized a sacred song on the piano, he was so moved as to feel more kindly disposed toward religion—by which he meant “going to church, and all that sort of thing”—than ever in his life before. He did not call the next Sunday, but came on Saturday. The only one present who was not pleased with him was Miss Dasomma, who happened also to spend the evening there.

Devout as well as enthusiastic, human as well as artistic, Hester’s teacher was not an angel of music only, but had, for many years, been a power in the family for good. She did not find her atmosphere gladdened by Mr. Vavasor’s presence. With tact enough to take his cue from the family, he treated her with studious politeness, but Miss Dasomma did not like Mr. Vavasor. She had to think before she could tell why, for there is a spiritual instinct which often takes the lead ahead of the understanding, and has to search and analyze itself for its own explanation. But once roused, she followed the question, and sitting off to the side while Hester played and watching his countenance, she tried to read it—trying to read, that is, what the owner of the face never meant to write. For what a man is lies as certainly upon his countenance as in his heart, though none of his friends may be able to read it.

Miss Dasomma’s conclusion was, that Vavasor was a man of good instincts—as perhaps who is not?—but without moral development, pleased with himself, and desirous of pleasing others—at present more than moderately desirous of pleasing Hester Raymount.

“But,” thought Miss Dasomma, “if this be his best, what might be his worst?” That he had some capacity for music was plain. But if, as she judged, the faculty was unassociated in him with truth of nature, it rendered him the more dangerous. For, at Hester’s feet in the rare atmosphere and faint twilight of music, how could he fail to impress her with an opinion of himself more favourable than just? She knew well the character of his aunt, and the relation in which he stood to her. But for the present she could only keep a gentle watch over the mind of her pupil.

But that pupil had a better protection in the sacred ambition stirring in her. Hester had not yet told Miss Dasomma about it, even though she was the one best able to understand it. For Hester had already had sufficient experience to know that it is a killing thing to talk about what you mean to do. It is to let the wind in upon a delicate plant, requiring a long childhood under glass, open to sun and air, closed to wind and frost.