Descending the stairs rapidly, he had just reached the landing opposite the drawing-room, when he heard the sounds of a guitar accompaniment, and the sweet silvery tones of a female voice. He listened, and to his amazement heard that the singer was endeavoring, and with considerable success, too, to remember his own Mexican air that he had sung the preceding evening.
Somehow, it struck him he had never thought the melody so pretty before; there was a tenderness in the plaintive parts he could not have conceived. Not so the singer; for after a few efforts to imitate one of Roland's bolder passages, she drew her finger impatiently across the chords, and exclaimed, “It is of no use; it is only the caballero himself can do it.”
“Let him teach you, then!” cried Cashel, as he sprang into the room, wild with delight.
“Oh, Mr. Cashel, what a start you 've given me!” said Olivia Kennyfeck, as, covered with blushes, and trembling with agitation, she leaned on the back of a chair.
“Oh, pray forgive me,” said he, eagerly; “but I was so surprised, so delighted to hear you recalling that little song, I really forgot everything else. Have I startled you, then?”
“Oh, no; it's nothing. I was trying a few chords. I thought I was quite alone.”
“But you'll permit me to teach you some of our Mexican songs, won't you? I should be so charmed to hear them sung as you could sing them.”
“It is too kind of you,” said she, timidly; “but I am no musician. My sister is a most skilful performer, but I really know nothing; a simple ballad and a canzonette are the extent of my efforts.”
“For our prairie songs, it is the feeling supplies all the character. They are wild, fanciful things, with no higher pretensions than to recall some trait of the land they belong to; and I should be so flattered if you would take an interest in the Far West.”
“How you must love it! How you must long to return to it!” said Olivia, raising her long drooping lashes, and letting her eyes rest, with an expression of tender melancholy, on Cashel.