Knowing that Hester was fond of a good ballad, he thought to try his hand at one, thinking it could not be so difficult. But he found that, like everything else, a ballad was easy enough if you could do it, and more than difficult if you could not. After several attempts he wisely yielded the ambition—his gift did not lie in that direction! He had, however, been so long in the habit of writing drawing-room verses that he had better ground for hoping he might produce something of the kind which might please her. It would be a great stroke toward placing him in a right position with her. It should be a love song, and he would present it as one he had written long ago. As such it would say the more for him while it would not seem that he had written it for her.

So one evening as he stood by her piano, he said all at once:

“By the bye, Miss Raymount, last night, as I was turning over some songs I wrote many years ago, I came upon one I thought I should like you just to look at—not the music—that is worth nothing, though I was proud enough of it then and thought it an achievement. But the words I still think are not so bad—considering. They are so far from me now that I am able to speak of them as if they were not mine at all!”

“Do let me see them!” said Hester, hiding none of the interest she felt, though fearing a little she might not be able to praise them so much as she would like.

He took the song from his pocket, and smoothed it out before her on the piano.

“Read it to me,” said Hester.

“No, please,” he answered with a little shyness, the rarest of phenomena in his spiritual atmosphere. “I could not read it aloud. But do not let it bore you if—”

He did not finish his sentence, and Hester was already busy with his manuscript.

When he was gone, leaving his manuscript behind him, Hester set to it again, and trying the music over, was by it so far enlightened that she despaired of finding anything in it, and felt a good deal disappointed.

Yet by degrees he continued to show her things. And if, as with the first, she saw little in their meaning, she hoped more meaning might be there than she was able to appreciate. For she was continuing to gather interest in Vavasor, though slowly, as was natural with a girl of her character. She had no suspicion of just how empty he was, even after she began reading some of his verses. It was impossible to imagine a person so indifferent to truth, or without interest in his own character and growth. Being of one piece herself, she had no conception of a nature all in pieces—with no unity except that of pleasing self. Though her nature did now and then receive a jar and a shock from him, she generally attributed it to his lack of development—a condition which she hoped her influence might change.