His voice was a small sweet tenor, not very loud, but wonderfully soft and sympathetic, so that he rendered the song he now sang with rare delicacy and tenderness.
I.
"Sleep, little baby! peacefully rest,
Mother is clasping thee close to her breast;
Angels watch over thee gentle and mild,
Guard thee with heavenly love undefiled.
Sleep little baby, safe in thy nest,
Sleep little baby! mother's own child."
II.
"Sleep, little baby! fear not the storm,
Tenderly mother is holding thy form.
Mother's eyes watching thee ever above
Shine like twin stars with fathomless love.
Sleep, little baby! safely and warm,
Sleep, little baby! mother's own dove."
When he had ended the song with one soft, long-drawn note, he glanced furtively at Lady Errington, and saw that he had touched the one sympathetic chord of her nature, for those calm blue eyes were full of unshed tears hanging on the long lashes. Eustace delicately refrained from noticing her emotion, but rising from the piano strolled on to the terrace, leaned lightly over the balustrade and gazed absorbedly at the restless water, dark and sombre under the stone wall.
"A perfect night," he murmured after a pause, during which Lady Errington found time to recover herself from the momentary fit of emotion.
"Yes," answered Alizon mechanically, then after a pause, "thank you very much for the song."
"I'm glad you liked it," responded Eustace equably, and again there was silence between them. The moonlight shone on both their faces, on his, massive and masterful with a poetic look in his wonderfully eloquent eyes, and on hers, delicate, distinct and fragile, as if it had been carved from ivory. Light laughter from the two young people at the end of the terrace, a deep murmur of conversation from within, where Sir Guy strove gallantly to entertain his drowsy guest, but this man and woman, oblivious of all else, remained absorbed in their own thoughts.
Of what was she thinking? of her past sorrow, her present happiness, her doubtful future (for the future is doubtful with all humanity)--Who could tell? Eustace, delicately sympathetic as he was, stood outside the closed portals of her soul, into which no man, not even her husband, had penetrated. But men and women, however closely allied, how, ever passionately attached, however unreserved in their confidences, never know one another's souls. There is always a something behind all which is never revealed, which the soul feels intensely itself, yet shrinks from disclosing even to nearest and dearest, and it is this vague secret which all feel, yet none tell, that makes humanity live in loneliest isolation from each other.