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 THE FIRST VIOLIN

 _A NOVEL._

 BY JESSIE FOTHERGILL,

 _Author of "A March in the Ranks," Etc._

     *       *       *       *       *

 NEW YORK
 THE FEDERAL BOOK COMPANY
 PUBLISHERS




THE FIRST VIOLIN.




CHAPTER I.

MISS HALLAM.


"Wonderful weather for April!" Yes, it certainty was wonderful. I fully
agreed with the sentiment expressed at different periods of the day by
different members of my family; but I did not follow their example and
seek enjoyment out-of-doors--pleasure in that balmy spring air.
Trouble--the first trouble of my life--had laid her hand heavily upon
me. The world felt disjointed and all upside-down; I very helpless and
lonely in it. I had two sisters, I had a father and a mother; but none
the less was I unable to share my grief with any one of them; nay, it
had been an absolute relief to me when first one and then another of
them had left the house, on business or pleasure intent, and I, after
watching my father go down the garden-walk, and seeing the gate close
after him, knew that, save for Jane, our domestic, who was caroling
lustily to herself in the kitchen regions, I was alone in the house.

I was in the drawing-room. Once secure of solitude, I put down the
sewing with which I had been pretending to employ myself, and went to
the window--a pleasant, sunny bay. In that window stood a small
work-table, with a flower-pot upon it containing a lilac primula. I
remember it distinctly to this day, and I am likely to carry the
recollection with me so long as I live. I leaned my elbows upon this
table, and gazed across the fields, green with spring grass, tenderly
lighted by an April sun, to where the river--the Skern--shone with a
pleasant, homely, silvery glitter, twining through the smiling meadows
till he bent round the solemn overhanging cliff crowned with mournful
firs, which went by the name of the Rifted or Riven Scaur.

In some such delightful mead might the white-armed Nausicaa have
tossed her cowslip balls among the other maids; perhaps by some such
river might Persephone have paused to gather the daffodil--"the fateful
flower beside the rill." Light clouds flitted across the sky, a waft of
wind danced in at the open window, ruffling my hair mockingly, and
bearing with it the deep sound of a church clock striking four.

As if the striking of the hour had been a signal for the breaking of a
spell, the silence that had prevailed came to an end. Wheels came
rolling along the road up to the door, which, however, was at the other
side of the house. "A visitor for my father, no doubt," I thought
indifferently; "and he has gone out to read the funeral service for a
dead parishioner. How strange! I wonder how clergymen and doctors can
ever get accustomed to the grim contrasts amid which they live!"

I suffered my thoughts to wander off in some such track as this, but
they were all through dominated by a heavy sense of oppression--the
threatening hand of a calamity which I feared was about to overtake me,
and I had again forgotten the outside world.

The door was opened. Jane held it open and said nothing (a trifling
habit of hers, which used to cause me much annoyance), and a tall woman
walked slowly into the room. I rose and looked earnestly at her,
surprised and somewhat nervous when I saw who she was--Miss Hallam, of
Hallam Grange, our near neighbor, but a great stranger to us,
nevertheless, so far, that is, as personal intercourse went.

"Your servant told me that every one was out except Miss May," she
remarked, in a harsh, decided voice, as she looked not so much at me as
toward me, and I perceived that there was something strange about her
eyes.

"Yes; I am sorry," I began, doubtfully.

She had sallow, strongly marked, but proud and aristocratic features,
and a manner with more than a tinge of imperiousness. Her face, her
figure, her voice were familiar, yet strange to me--familiar because I
had heard of her, and been in the habit of occasionally seeing her from
my very earliest childhood; strange, because she was reserved and not
given to seeing her neighbors' houses for purposes either of gossip or
hospitality. I was aware that