“Pardon, kind sir,” she said. “I feared that you were in trouble.”
“Trouble!”
He laughed a low, mirthless laugh.
“Trouble, child! Ah, such trouble that never entered another heart! You wonder in your innocence that I—the owner of all these broad lands, of yonder noble home—you wonder what I can know of trouble! For your simple life, even though you know not from one day to another how you are to live, God knows how gladly I would exchange, if the past could be forever blotted out!”
He turned to continue his way, but spoke again.
“You have not told me your name.”
“Theresa Hamilton,” she said, simply.
“Hamilton!” he replied. “That is not an Italian name.”
“No, sir. My father is an Englishman. My dear dead mother was an Italian. My father and I live together at Tenterden, a village twenty miles away. I only sing for money when it is hard to obtain the rent for our pretty cottage. Ah, here comes father! One of the wheels of his harmonium carriage came off, and he has been to the village to have it repaired. We are going home now.” She paused and added in a whisper: “Ah, kind signor, I hope that you will not be long unhappy!”
The musician came toward them, and seemed a little surprised that his daughter should be talking to the lord of this great domain.