"This is hardly fair," exclaimed Marion, laughingly starting up with a brilliant blush of astonishment; "you know, Lord Wigton, stealing into a dwelling house is punishable by law."
"Whatever be the penalty, I am sufficiently rewarded," answered he, with a shy diffident look. "My flute will be happy any day to make you an apology."
Those who love music, and those only, can estimate its power over the feelings, and for several minutes afterwards Lord Wigton remained silent, then, suddenly awakening as if from a dream, he uttered some incoherent exclamations of rapture, and in tones of unaffected animation entreated Marion to sing the same air once again; while she, amused and surprised at his extraordinary empressement, prepared to comply.
"My song is not worth asking for twice, and still less worth refusing, therefore you shall have it in my very best style!" said Marion, playing the prelude, for she had none of that giggling affected shyness assumed by most girls during their first winter. "This note is pitched so high, you should go up stairs to hear it!"
"How strange that one so gay as you, should have a voice of such melting sadness!" exclaimed Lord Wigton. "It awakens fifty thousand thoughts and feelings I never knew before! I shall become an improvisatore, when listening to melody 'so rare and enchanting!'"
"You must have heard it through the key-hole!" said Marion, laughing. "I had no idea that my trash could reach any ears but my own."
"It did more, for it reached my heart! Your voice is the very essence of nightingales. I shall follow you to Harrowgate, for the chance of hearing that air once again."
"Perhaps, then, it has some peculiar interest," said Marion, surprised at the warmth of his enthusiasm. "The chief delight of music certainly is, the associations it brings out, the remembrances of bye-gone hours it recalls, and the million of little phantoms it creates of past or future times."
"Marion! your voice is by no means equal to that song, and your style is very amateur-ish indeed," interrupted Agnes, bitterly. "I do not wish to boast," added she, laughing, to conceal her irritation; "but Grisi never ventured to sing that air after hearing me, and Delvini said his fortune would be made, if he could engage me for his Prima Donna. I only mention this among friends. Keep it secret, for I hate to cause jealousy and mortification! Few people understand music like my old master Delvini, who said that my god-mother must certainly have possessed the wand of a fairy, and gifted me with music."
"Ah! Delvini is the man who plays a whole concerto upon one note of the piano, or something wonderful of that kind," observed Lord Wigton, looking impatiently for Marion to begin. "I hate the helter-skelter school in music! people scampering through their songs with a thousand miraculous flourishes, which set one's teeth on edge."