The whole household was pervaded with an affectionate eagerness to please her, though, perhaps, the one most dazzled by her entrancing smile and sweet consideration for his comfort was Edward Neville, Sir Philip's private secretary and librarian,--a meek, mild-featured man of some five and forty years old, whose stooping shoulders, grizzled hair, and weak eyes gave him an appearance of much greater age. Thelma was particularly kind to Neville, having heard his history from her husband. It was brief and sad. He had married a pretty young girl whom he had found earning a bare subsistence as a singer in provincial music-halls,--loving her, he had pitied her unprotected state, and had rescued her from the life she led--but after six months of comparative happiness, she had suddenly deserted him, leaving no clue as to where or why she had gone. His grief for her loss, weighed heavily upon his mind--he brooded incessantly upon it--and though his profession was that of a music master and organist, he grew so abstracted and inattentive to the claims of the few pupils he had, that they fell away from him one by one--and, after a bit, he lost his post as organist to the village church as well. This smote him deeply, for he was passionately fond of music, and was, moreover, a fine player,--and it was at this stage of his misfortunes that he met by chance Bruce-Errington. Philip, just then, was almost broken-hearted--his father and mother had died suddenly within a week of one another,--and he, finding the blank desolation of his home unbearable, was anxious to travel abroad for a time, so soon as he could find some responsible person in whose hands to leave the charge of the Manor, with its invaluable books and pictures, during his absence.
Hearing Neville's history through a mutual friend, he decided, with his usual characteristic impulse, that here was the very man for him--a gentleman by birth, rumored to be an excellent scholar,--and he at once offered him the post he had in view,--that of private secretary at a salary of 200 pounds per annum. The astonished Neville could not at first believe in his good fortune, and began to stammer forth his gratitude with trembling lips and moistening eyes,--but Errington cut him short by declaring the whole thing settled, and desiring him to enter on his duties at once. He was forthwith installed in his position,--a highly enviable one for a man of his dreamy and meditative turn of mind. To him, literature and music were precious as air and light, he handled the rare volumes on the Errington book-shelves with lingering tenderness, and often pored over some difficult manuscript, or dusty folio till long past midnight, almost forgetful of his griefs in the enchantment thus engendered. Nor did he lack his supreme comforter, music,--there was a fine organ at the lower end of the long library, and seated at his beloved instrument, he wiled away many an hour,--steeping his soul in the divine and solemn melodies of Palestrina and Pergolesi, till the cruel sorrow that had darkened his life seemed nothing but a bad dream, and the face of his wife as he had first known it, fair, trustful, and plaintive, floated before his eyes unchanged, and arousing in him the old foolish throbbing emotions of rapture and passion that had gladdened the bygone days.