Robert thought her a bewitching, half-grown thing, overflowing with potentialities of future brilliance and empire.
Her music astonished him.

Where had a little provincial maiden learned to play with this intelligence, this force, this delicate command of her instrument?
He was not a musician, and therefore could not gauge her exactly, but he was more or less familiar with music and its standards, as all people become nowadays who live in a highly cultivated society, and he knew enough at any rate to see that what he was listening to was remarkable, was out of the common range.

Still more evident was this, when from the humorous piece with which the sisters led off--a dance of clowns, but clowns of Arcady--they slid into a delicate rippling _chant d'amour_, the long-drawn notes of the violin rising and falling on the piano accompaniment with an exquisite plaintiveness.

Where did a _fillette_, unformed, inexperienced, win the secret of so much eloquence--only from the natural dreams of a girl's heart as to 'the lovers waiting in the hidden years ?' But when the music ceased, Elsmere, after a hearty clap that set the room applauding likewise, turned not to the musician but the figure beside Mrs.Leyburn, the sister who had sat listening with an impassiveness, a sort of gentle remoteness of look which had piqued his curiosity.

The mother meanwhile was drinking in the compliments of Dr.
Baker.
'Excellent!' cried Elsmere.