‘What! are you in earnest?’
‘On my word, it is true! Nina can’t endure her; but Nina doesn’t care for hare-hunting, and, I’m afraid to say, never saw a badger drawn in her life.’
‘And have you?’ asked he, almost with horror in his tone.
‘I’ll show you three regular little turnspit dogs to-morrow that will answer that question.’
‘How I wish Lockwood had come out here with me,’ said Walpole, almost uttering a thought.
‘That is, you wish he had seen a bit of barbarous Ireland he’d scarcely credit from mere description. But perhaps I’d have been better behaved before him. I’m treating you with all the freedom of an old friend of my cousin’s.’
Nina had meanwhile opened the piano, and was letting her hands stray over the instrument in occasional chords; and then in a low voice, that barely blended its tones with the accompaniment, she sang one of those little popular songs of Italy, called ‘Stornelli’—-wild, fanciful melodies, with that blended gaiety and sadness which the songs of a people are so often marked by.
‘That is a very old favourite of mine,’ said Walpole, approaching the piano as noiselessly as though he feared to disturb the singer; and now he stole into a chair at her side. ‘How that song makes me wish we were back again, where I heard it first,’ whispered he gently.
‘I forget where that was,’ said she carelessly.
‘No, Nina, you do not,’ said he eagerly; ‘it was at Albano, the day we all went to Pallavicini’s villa.’