"Oh, no," says Mona, shocked at this interpretation of her manner. "I did not mean all that; only I really did not require it; at least"—truthfully—"not much. And, besides, a song is not like a gold chain; and you are quite different from them; and besides, again,"—growing slightly confused, yet with a last remnant of courage,—"there is no reason why you should give me anything. Shall I"—hurriedly—"sing something else for you?"
And then she sings again, some old-world song of love and chivalry that awakes within one a quick longing for a worthier life. Her sweet voice rings through the room, now glad with triumph, now sad with a "lovely melancholy," as the words and music sway her. Her voice is clear and pure and full of pathos! She seems to follow no rule; an "f" here or a "p" there, on the page before her, she heeds not, but sings only as her heart dictates.
When she has finished, Geoffrey says "thank you" in a low tone. He is thinking of the last time when some one else sang to him, and of how different the whole scene was from this. It was at the Towers, and the hour with its dying daylight, rises before him. The subdued light of the summer eve, the open window, the perfume of the drowsy flowers, the girl at the piano with her small drooping head and her perfectly trained and very pretty voice, the room, the soft silence, his mother leaning back in her crimson velvet chair, beating time to the music with her long jewelled, fingers,—all is remembered.
It was in the boudoir they were sitting, and Violet was dressed in some soft gray dress that shone and turned into palest pearl as she moved. It was his mother's boudoir, the room she most affects, with its crimson and gray coloring and its artistic arrangements, that blend so harmoniously, and are so tremendously becoming to the complexion when the blinds are lowered. How pretty Mona would look in a gray and crimson room? how——
"What are you thinking of?" asks Mona, softly, breaking in upon his soliloquy.
"Of the last time I heard any one sing," returns he, slowly. "I was comparing that singer very unfavorably with you. Your voice is so unlike what one usually hears in drawing-rooms."
He means highest praise. She accepts his words as a kind rebuke.
"Is that a compliment?" she says, wistfully. "Is it well to be unlike all the world? Yet what you say is true, no doubt. I suppose I am different from—from all the other people you know."
This is half a question; and Geoffrey, answering it from his heart, sinks even deeper into the mire.
"You are indeed," he says, in a tone so grateful that it ought to have betrayed to her his meaning. But grief and disappointment have seized upon her.