Madame Cantara trilled and warbled in tones so clear, flute-like and sweet that to close one’s eyes was to imagine the apartment some vast forest, filled with a myriad of feathered songsters, vying with each other for woodland supremacy in Apollo’s blessed sphere.
Miss Stanhope’s musicale was a pronounced and splendid success. Nothing approaching it had entertained Boston’s fastidious “four hundred” that season.
Burton declared that it was the most delightful function he had attended in years, when Lucy, enwrapped in furs, was closely nestled at his side in the carriage after the entertainment was over. Burton was par excellence a judge of such affairs. In fact, he had been accorded the position of arbiter elegantiarum by a tacit understanding among people of taste and culture in Boston’s elite society.
It was among such scenes, surroundings, environments and society as above described that Burton’s life had been passed since coming to America. It was in this joyous atmosphere that the first year of Lucy’s married life glided by so rapidly that the length of time seemed difficult for her to realize. It was like the dream of a summer’s day, so bright, cloudless and calm, so fragrant with the perfume of love’s early blossoms, that its passage was as that of a fleeting shadow.
The sinking sun cast lengthening shadows across Manila Bay, where swinging peacefully at their anchors lay the great war ships of several nations, and where the tall masts of a fleet of merchantmen caused bars of shade to stripe the burnished waters of the Bay.
The starry flag of the great Republic had received that salute, ever loyally given by the sons of Columbia, as the sun sank beneath the horizon, and the bugle blew its farewell to the departing orb of day.
Four majestic, floating fortresses, on whose decks stood uncovered crews as the proud flag of the union descended, gave notice to the world of the might of that young giant of the west that held dominion in the Philippines.
Striding along in the rapidly darkening twilight, up the main street of Manila, walked one who would have been known as a sailor by his swinging, rolling gait, even without the nautical cut and material of the clothing that he wore.
As he approached the newly erected, palacious American hotel, around which ran a broad veranda filled with tables and chairs, the chief resort of the army and naval officers stationed at Manila, a voice cried from the balcony above him: