"It's a song I'm very fond of," Roland replied.
Nora sang the old, tender, Scotch love-song with a simple pathos that suited it as well as did her fine contralto. Roland, who like most emotional people, was exceedingly sensitive to the power of music, felt it float through his whole being—soothing the nervous system which had been on the strain all day, and taking him, for a moment, into that world of romance among whose bowery walks it is so pleasant, for even the most practical-minded, occasionally to wander. But the dream of romance was abruptly ended by the summons to tea. And Nora could not help noticing, all through that meal, how Roland's eyes followed every motion of Grace Alden with a quite unconscious devotion. It recalled to her Tennyson's line:
"And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung."
But Grace, she was sure, would never be the "shallow-hearted cousin Amy" in any event. Was she too much of a child, still, to be touched by this unspoken, though evident admiration on the part of a young man so attractive as Roland Graeme? Nora could not, at any rate, detect, in the frank ingenuous face, any trace of consciousness. And the father and mother seemed equally unconscious; which was scarcely to be wondered at, for they regarded Grace, at sixteen, as only a child still. Fathers and mothers are often the last to see that the nestlings are fledged.
Nora, as most people will have discerned, was a rather romantic young woman, and it did not take many minutes for this little possible romance to flash through her brain. Roland sat near her at tea, and his first remark was, naturally, an interested inquiry for the poor invalid to whom he had guided her.
"And how is the little girl getting on?" asked Mr. Alden, when Nora had given her report of the mother.
"Oh, she seems tolerably contented, now," was the reply. "But she is a strange child—rather; very variable in her moods, though very concentrated and self-contained. Under all her quietness, she seems nervous and excitable, with a passionate and self-willed nature—I can see very well—though her very shyness seems to keep it down."
"I have no doubt her mother must have a history," said Mr. Alden, thoughtfully. "I wish we could know what it is."
"Cecilia has a wonderfully good ear," Nora went on, "and a perfect passion for music. I shouldn't wonder if she were to turn out a prima-donna yet."
"And so you have taken charge of the child, yourself," said Roland, his eye lighting up with ready sympathy. "That was truly kind!"