She looked up quickly. 'Perhaps,' the lips said laughingly; but the dark eyes gave a sweet silent answer Ralph did not see, though he was watching them. But after Vere Leveson had gone, he walked home beneath the Christmas stars, with Louise's hand resting on his arm, dreaming as he went, a fair, fond, foolish dream.
The Christmas-eve ball at Leigh Park was a regular institution, one which Sir Harry Leveson had kept up for years. It was a pretty sight, Ralph thought, as he stood leaning against a window, and looking round to select a partner. And amongst all the fair women, the one he thought the fairest was his young ward Louise Wrayworth, in her white floating dress, with its wreaths of holly, and the red clustering berries in her dark hair.
Ralph had been watching Vere Leveson, trying to decide in his own mind whether Mrs Loraine's verdict of flirtation was a just one; and he judged that it was; for the attentions of the young officer were apparently equally divided between Louise and Katharine. Ralph did not happen to be near when, later on, he led Louise to one of the cool empty rooms, where through the open window could be heard the merry Christmas bells. He did not see the hand-clasp or the light that flashed in the eyes of each. He did not hear the hurried whisper: 'Louise, you won't forget me, you will trust me till next Christmas-time?'
The ball was over, the rooms were dark and silent; the whole world waited for the sun to rise on Christmas-day.
[IS THE TELEPHONE A PRACTICAL SUCCESS?]
In September last appeared in this Journal an article entitled 'Singing and Talking by Telegraph;' and in that paper we attempted to describe the mechanism of that wonderful little instrument the telephone. It is now our purpose to say something regarding the progress that has been made towards perfecting the invention; but in order to make the article as clear as possible, we venture once more upon a few words explanatory of the instrument.
The telephone as it is now made is an exceedingly simple-looking apparatus similar in appearance to a stethoscope; to the handle of a girl's skipping-rope; or better still, to a large-sized penny wooden trumpet. Inside this hollow cylinder, and within an inch or so of the wider end, is fixed a plate of iron as thin as a well-worn sixpence, and about the size of a half-crown piece. This is called the diaphragm. Behind the diaphragm, nearly touching it, and extending to the narrower end of the cylinder, is a piece of 'soft' iron enveloped in wire coils, with a permanent magnet beyond. Outside the narrower end of the cylinder, and communicating with the coils that surround the iron inside, are attached two screws or 'terminals,' which are 'joined up' to a main wire, communicating with the distant or receiving telephone wherever that may be, and which is precisely similar to the one we have described. When we apply our mouth to the bell-shaped end of the apparatus, and speak or shout or sing, we set the diaphragm vibrating as in a tuning-fork; the vibrations thus created are electrically communicated through the wire to a distant telephone, and are repeated on its diaphragm with more or less distinctness.
It is known that the motion of an iron plate contiguous to the poles of a magnet creates a disturbance of electricity in coils surrounding those poles; and the duration of this current will coincide with the vibratory motion of the plate or diaphragm. When, therefore, the human voice (or any other suitable sound) impinges through the tube against this diaphragm, the diaphragm begins to vibrate, and awakens, so to speak, electrical action in the coils of wire surrounding the poles of the magnet; not a current, but a series of undulations, something like those produced by the voice in the air around us. In short the telephone is an apparatus designed to transmit sound through a wire of indefinite length; the voice being, so to speak, 'converted into electricity at one end, the electricity becoming voice at the other.'
With these few explanatory remarks, we now proceed to offer to our readers the following interesting experiments made by a gentleman well skilled in telegraphy.