"And the other? The song?"
"Guess," he said, also in a whisper.
She swept her tearful eyes round upon him searchingly, hungrily.
"Was it this evening—after—?"
He bowed his head gravely. Her hands went out to him impetuously.
"Oh, Digby, did it make you feel all that?"
"There is no doubt," said Lady Joan, loudly, "that our sympathies or our antipathies make us sometimes imagine a likeness where it cannot exist. I remember when I was a small child and came to stay with my great-uncle here, I used to invent every kind of excuse for going down to the post-office, because I thought the boy behind the counter was like a cousin of mine I had a romantic admiration for at the time. And of course you know how there are some days when everybody in the street reminds you of some one you don't want to meet, and others when you feel you have not the least affinity to your own sister. The fact is, family likeness is all rubbish, like most of the traditions we have grown up with; I mean, there is just as much chance of two strangers being alike, which you have just proved yourself, Mr. Johnson, by supposing Mr. Raleigh and my little friend Norah to be brother and sister. Shall we go in, now, or would you like another turn round the garden?"
The curate felt he had been sufficiently battered in that one brief stroll to the lake, and he consulted his watch and said he had some work waiting for him at home. So they came back again through the open window, and found Norah still lying on the couch, and the musician on the low chair at her side.
"What a horrid little man," said Lady Joan, when the curate had left.