They were all clever, and well-read, without a tinge of the bluestocking,
and most of them were musical to the tips of their slender fingers. How
merrily their laughter used to ring across the ancient close, and how
playfully and gently they used to rally the dear learned old Dean who had
watched over them and cared for them since Mrs. MAYBLOOM'S death, many
years before, with all the tender care of the most devoted mother. And of
this fair and smiling throng, "my only rosary," as the Dean used to call
them, HERMIONE was, I think, the prettiest, as she was certainly the most
accomplished. Every kind of gift had been showered upon her by Nature. When
she played her violin, accompanied by her elder sister on the piano, tears
trickled unbidden down the aquiline nose of the militant Bishop of
Archester, the chapter stood hushed to a man, and the surrounding curates
were only prevented by a salutary fear of ruining their chances of
preferment from laying themselves, their pittances, and their garnered
store of slippers at her pretty feet. Then in a fit of charming petulance,
she would break off in the middle of the piece, lay down her violin, and,
with a pretty imperiousness, command a younger sister to fetch her zither,
on which to complete the subjugation of her adorers.
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