The evening meal was, notwithstanding this, a very happy one.
The judge chatted gaily with his restored son, encouraging him to talk of his wanderings in the old world.
The old lady listened with pleased attention, and only once in a while broke her silence to ask whether he had been presented to all the queens in Europe, and which was the most beautiful woman among them, or some such question as that.
Her son answered that he saw no woman in Europe prettier than some he found at home; and he glanced at Drusilla with a smile.
The girl beaming in the light of his countenance, and drinking in the music of his voice was intensely happy and—vaguely wretched.
When supper was over they went back into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Lyon made Drusilla sit down to the pianoforte and play and sing for Alexander.
He shrugged his shoulders at the proposition, but politely acquiesced and prepared to be bored. Alexander was a connoisseur in music, and he had heard the very best singers of the day. Consequently he had little patience with the crude efforts of young misses.
She, Drusilla, began with a very simple song—chosen in compliment to the newly-arrived son:
“Home again! home again! from a foreign shore,
And oh, it fills my soul with joy to meet my friends once more.”