"The violin?" queried Reginald. "Did Miss Willoughby play on the violin?"
"Oh yes! she was very musical, and that was one of the great attractions to her in the man she married. He, too, was a wonderful violinist—Herr Heinz they called him. He was, I believe, a much-respected man and of good family connections, but poor, and even taught music to gain a livelihood."
"Heinz!" Reginald was repeating to himself. Then he had heard that name before first in connection with the child of the Black Forest; but he only said, "It is curious that I have lately heard that name from the young Wardens, who speak a great deal of a Dr. Heinz. He also is a good violinist. Can he be any relation, do you think, of the one you allude to?"
"Possibly he may; but the name is not at all an uncommon German one. By the way, I heard a report (probably a false one) that Gertie Warden is engaged to be married to a Dr. Heinz—a very good man, they say. Have you heard anything of it?"
"I never heard she was engaged, nor do I think it is likely; but I have heard both her and her sister speak of this Dr. Heinz, and I know it is only a Christian man that Gertie would marry."
Having said so much, he quickly changed the subject and talked of something else. The mother's eye, however, was quick to notice the shade on his brow as he spoke, and she was confirmed in the opinion she had formed for some time that the very idea of Gertie Warden's engagement was a pain to him. As he rose to go out he turned to say, "Remember, mother, that I have given you Miss Warden's message."
CHAPTER XIII.
IN THE SLUMS.
"In dens of guilt the baby played,
Where sin and sin alone was made
The law which all around obeyed."
THE summer sunshine, of which we have written as glistening among the "leafy tide of greenery," and on the ripening corn-fields and gaily-painted flowers in the country, was penetrating also the close streets of one of the poorest parts of London, cheering some of the hearts of the weary toiling ones there, into whose lives little sunshine ever fell, and for a while, it may be, helping them to forget the misery of their lot, or to some recalling happier days when they dwelt not in a narrow, crowded street, but in a country village home, amidst grassy meadows and leafy trees, feeling, as they thought of these things, though they could not have put the feeling into words, what a poet gone to his rest says so beautifully,—