Robert watched her with amusement.
It was certainly a remarkable duet.

After an _adagio_ opening in which flute and piano were at magnificent cross purposes from the beginning, the two instruments plunged into an _allegro_ very long and very fast, which became ultimately a desperate race between the competing performers for the final chord.

Mr.Mayhew toiled away, taxing the resources of his whole vast frame to keep his small instrument in a line with the piano, and taxing them in vain.

For the shriller and the wilder grew the flute, and the greater the exertion of the dark Hercules performing on it, the fiercer grew the pace of the piano.

Rose stamped her little foot.
'Two bars ahead last page,' she murmured, 'three bars this; will no one stop her!' But the pages flew past, turned assiduously by Agnes, who took a sardonic delight in these performances, and every countenance in the room seemed to take a look of sharpened anxiety as to how the duet was to end, and who was to be victor.
Nobody knowing Miss Barks need to have, been in any doubt as to that! Crash came the last chord, and the poor flute, nearly half a page behind, was left shrilly hanging, in mid-air, forsaken and companionless, an object of derision to gods and men.
'Ah! I took it a little fast!' said the lady, triumphantly looking up at the discomfited clergyman.
'Mr.Elsmere,' said Rose, hiding herself in the window-curtain beside him, that she might have her laugh in safety, 'do they play like that in Oxford, or has Long Whindale a monopoly ?' But before he could answer, Mrs.Thornburgh called to the girl.
'Rose! Rose! Don't go out again! It is your turn next!' Rose advanced reluctantly, her head in air.