At Love's Cost

It was all lost upon Ida, whose head was in the clouds, whose mind was

dwelling on the past; but his mother and sister noticed it, and Mrs.

Heron began to sniff by way of disapproval of his conduct. With a

mother's sharp eyes, Mrs. Heron understood why Joseph had launched out

into new suits and brilliant neckties, why he came home earlier than

was his wont, and why he hung about the pale-faced girl who seemed

unconscious of his presence. Mrs. Heron began to feel, as she would

have expressed it, that she had taken a viper into her bosom. She was

ambitious for her only son, and wanted to see him married to one of the

daughters of a retired city man who had settled in Woodgreen. Ida was

all very well, but she was absolutely penniless and not a good enough

match for so brilliant and promising a young man as Joseph. Mrs. Heron

began to regard her with a certain amount of coldness and suspicion;

but Ida was as unconscious of the change in Mrs. Heron's manner as she

was of the cause of Mr. Joseph's attention; to her he was just an

objectionable young man of quite a new and astonishing type, to whom

she was obliged to listen because he was the son of the man whose bread

she ate.

He had often invited Ida to accompany him and Isabel to a _matinée_,

but Ida always declined. Not only was her father's death too recent to

permit of her going to the theatre, but she shrank from all public

places of amusement. When she had left Herondale it had been with the

one desire to conceal herself, and, if possible, to earn her own

living. Mr. Joseph was very sulky over her refusal, and Isabel informed

her that he had been so ill-tempered at the theatre that she did not

know what to make of him.

One day he came in soon after luncheon, and, when Mrs. Heron had left

the room, informed Ida and Isabel that he had got tickets for a concert

at the Queen's Hall that evening.

"It's a sacred concert," he said, "so that you need have no scruples,

Ida. It's a regular swell affair, and I tell you I had great difficulty

in getting hold of the tickets. It's a charity concert got up by the

big nobs of the Stock Exchange, and there'll be no end of swells there.

I got the tickets because the guv'nor's going into the country to

preach to-night, and while the cat's away we can slip out and enjoy

ourselves; not that he'd object to a sacred concert, I suppose,

especially if he were allowed to hold forth during the intervals," he

added, with a sneer.