“Have you brought any music, Miss Raeburn?” she asked, turning to Erica with a chilling look, as though she had just become aware of her presence.
“I have none to bring,” said Erica. “I do not profess to sing; I only sing our own Scotch airs.”
“Exactly what I said!” exclaimed Donovan. “And Scotch singing of Scotch airs is like nothing else in the world.”
Whether he mesmerized them both, or whether his stronger will and higher purpose prevailed, it would be hard to say. Certainly Erica was quite as unwilling to sing as Lady Caroline was to favor her with a request. Both had to yield, however, and Erica, whether she would or not, had to serve her roomful of enemies and a great deal of good it did her.
Out of the quiet conservatory they came into the heat and glare and babel of voices; Lady Caroline feeling as if she had been caught in her own trap, Erica wavering between resentful defiance and the desire to substitute Donovan's “How can I serve?” for “What do they think?”
She sat down to the piano, which was in a far-away corner, and soon she had forgotten her audience altogether. Although she had had little time or opportunity for a thorough musical education, she had great taste, and was musical by nature; she sang her national airs, as very few could have sung them, and so wild and pathetic was the air she had chosen, “The Flowers of the Forest,” that the roar of conversation at once ceased. She knew nothing whatever about the listeners; the air had taken her back to her father's recovery at Codrington the year before. She was singing to him once more.
The old gentleman who had sat on her right hand at dinner came up now with his first remark.
“Thank you, that was a real treat, and a very rare treat. I wonder whether you would sing an old favorite of mine 'Oh, why did ye gang, lassie?'”
Erica at once complied, and there was such pathos in her low, clear voice, that tears stood in the eyes of more than one listener. She had never dared to sing that song at home since one evening some weeks before, when her father had just walked out of the room, unable to bear the mournful refrain “I never, never thought ye wad leave me!” The song was closely associated with the story of that summer, and she sang it to perfection.
Donovan Farrant came toward her again at the close.