Would Mrs. Carew sing them for him when she was far away, utterly forgotten by her guardian? The thought was unutterably bitter, and it goaded her, aided her in the ordeal.
With nerves strung to their extreme tension, she sang as he requested, and all the while her rich mellow voice rolled through the room, he walked very slowly from one end of the library to the other. She forced herself to sing every verse, and when she concluded he was standing behind her chair. He put his hands on her shoulders, and prevented her rising, for just then he was unwilling she should see his countenance, which he feared would betray the suffering he was resolved to conceal.
After a moment, he said:
"Thank you. I shall buy the music in order to secure the words.
Lily——"
He paused, bent down, and rested his chin on the large coil of hair at the back of her head, and though she never knew it his proud lips touched the glossy silken mass.
"Lily, if I ask a foolish trifle of you, will you grant it, as a farewell gift to your guardian?"
"I think, sir, you do not doubt that I will."
"It is a trivial thing, and will cost you nothing. The night on which you sang those songs to Llora is associated with something which I treasure as peculiarly precious; and I merely wish to request that you will never sing them again for any one unless I give you permission."
Swiftly she recalled the fact that on that particular evening he had escorted Mrs. Carew to a "German" at Mrs. Quimbey's, and she explained his request by the supposition that her songs to Mrs. Carew's child commemorated the date of his betrothal to the grey-eyed mother. Could she bear even to think of them in coming years?
She hastily pushed back the ivory stops, and shaking off his detaining palms, rose: