"Oh, Esther, how could you!" cried poor Dick again; but Mrs. Newbold only laughed.
"Don't be cynical and fault-finding, then, my dear Dick," she said, quietly, drawing one of Mimi's golden curls through her fingers; "it doesn't suit you, my dear, nor your little round, brown, winsome face."
"Since poetry seems to be the order of the day, listen to this," broke in Miss Hildreth, in her clear musical voice, and lifting her eyes from the tiny vellum book she held:
"'Near my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels would not buy from me.
'Tis a siren, a brown siren,
Playing on a lute of amber by the margin of a sea.
"In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes grow strong
With the dampness, I hear music—hear a quiet, plaintive song—
A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some immortal wrong.
"Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a soul that pleads in vain,
Of a damnèd soul repentant, that would fain be pure again!
And I lie awake and listen to the music of her pain.
"And whence comes this mournful music? Whence, unless it chance to be
From the siren, the brown siren,
Playing on her lute of amber by the margin of a sea?'"
Silence fell upon the little group as Patricia's voice died away. For a moment all were held by the spell of the poet's words, with their deep undernote of passionate protest. The present faded out of the line of mental vision, replaced by the past, within whose mystery of silence, somewhere a great wrong lay hidden, and unappeased.
Had the poet known of it, in all its details, and kept inviolate this secret of another's existence, or had he only guessed at its outlines, fearing to fill in the lights and shadows, lest imagination should fall short of reality?
So vivid, indeed, was the impression produced, it seemed only a continuation of the tragedy when Miss Hildreth spoke again, slowly and without any apparent reason, save inward impulse.