Twice, however, she got up while Matilda guarded her door, stood at her high, cell-like window, and peered through the slats of the closed shutter, past the purple-and-lavender plumes of the wistaria that climbed on up to the roof, and out upon the soft, green, sunny spaces of Washington Square.
The Square, which she had been proud to live upon but rarely walked in,--only children and nursemaids and the commoner people actually walked in it,--the Square looked so expansive, so free, so inviting.
And this tiny cell--these days of early May were unseasonably, hot--seemed to grow more narrow and more stifling every moment.

How had any one ever, ever voluntarily endured it! Mrs.De Peyster learned that Jack was studying at home, and studying hard.

With the return of Matilda to the house, Jack repeated his instruction concerning the piano: Matilda was to tell any inquisitive folk that Mrs.De Peyster had bought a player-piano shortly before she sailed, and that she, Matilda, was operating it to while away the tedious hours.

This device made it possible for Mary to begin her neglected practice.
With the certainty of being bored, yet with an irrepressible curiosity, Mrs.De Peyster, piano-lover, awaited during the morning and early forenoon Mary's first assault upon the instrument.

She would be crude, no doubt of it; no technique, no poetic suavity of touch, no sense of interpretation.
When from the rear drawing-room the grand piano sent upwards to Mrs.
De Peyster its first strains, they were rapid, careless scales and runs.