"You think me very uninteresting, I dare say. Young ladies who do not dance are generally so considered. Allow me to present you to some of my friends who will—"
"I beg pardon, Miss Heartwell, for my inattention. I was thinking of the past—the past recalled by your own story. Excuse my abstraction, I pray."
"But the young ladies?" said Lizzie.
"I do not care to dance now, if you will allow me the pleasure of a promenade," he replied.
"Certainly I will," replied Lizzie with a graceful bend of the shapely head; and clasping with her timid little hand the strong arm of the manly cadet, she passed with him from the lower drawing-room across the hall to the library.
"There's more room in the corridor than here," said Lizzie; "suppose we go there?"
"First let me ask a question, suggested by the musical instrument I see standing in the library. Do you sing? Do you sing with the harp?"
"I do."
"Will you not sing for me?"
"I will, with pleasure, if you will make room in the library," she replied with unaffected simplicity. The library was occupied by a number of matronly ladies and elderly gentlemen—all of the guests who were not participating in the dance. Lizzie bowed her head slightly, and passed to the harp, now silent in one corner. Without hesitation she seated herself before it, and the slender fingers grasped the strings of the instrument with a masterly touch, running through a soft, sweet prelude of tender chords. Her voice at last trilled forth in the charming strains of the old Scotch ballad, "Down the burn, Davy, love."