“I have heard the best living performers, vocal and instrumental, and to a finer voice than yours I never listened; but you need study and practice, for your execution is faulty. You have a splendid instrument; but you do not yet understand its management. Where do you live?”
“At ‘Grassmere,’ a farm two miles behind those hills, and in a house hidden under elm and apple trees. Madam, it is very late, and I must bid you good-evening. Before I go, I should like to know, if you will not deem me unwarrantably impertinent, whether you are a very young person with white hair, or whether you are a very old woman with a wonderfully young face?”
For a moment there was no answer; and, supposing that she had offended her, the orphan bowed and was turning away, when Mrs. Gerome’s calm, mournful tones arrested her:
“I am only twenty-three years old.”
She walked away, turning her countenance towards the water, where moonlight was burnishing the waves; and, when Salome and Stanley had reached the bend in their path that would shut out the view of the beach, the former looked back and saw the silver-gray figure standing alone on the silent shore, communing with the silver sea, as desolate and as hopeless as Buchanan’s “Penelope,”—
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“An alabaster woman, whose fixed eyes Stare seaward, whether it be storm or calm.” |
CHAPTER IX.
“Doctor Sheldon, do you think she is dangerously ill?”