“O! no, Elinor, Nurse was with them all the time. I would not let Miss Brandt or anyone take baby away alone. But she is so good-natured and so anxious to have her, that I don’t quite know how to refuse.”
“Perhaps she has been stuffing the child with some of her horrid chocolates or caramels. She is gorging them all day long herself!”
“I know my duty too well for that, Miss!” said the nurse resentfully, “I wouldn’t have allowed it! The dear baby did not have anything to eat at all.”
“Well! you’re both on her side evidently, so I will say no more,” concluded Miss Leyton, “At the same time if I had a child, I’d sooner trust it to a wild beast than the tender mercies of Miss Brandt. But it’s past four o’clock, Margaret! If we are to reach the entrepôt in time we must be going!”
Mrs. Pullen hastily assumed her hat and mantle, and prepared to accompany her friend. They had opened the door, and were about to leave the room when a flood of melody suddenly poured into the apartment. It proceeded from a room at the other end of the corridor and was produced by a mandoline most skilfully played. The silvery notes in rills and trills and chords, such as might have been evolved from a fairy harp, arrested the attention of both Miss Leyton and Mrs. Pullen. They had scarcely expressed their wonder and admiration to each other, at the skilful manipulation of the instrument (which evinced such art as they had never heard before except in public) when the strings of the mandoline were accompanied by a young, fresh contralto voice.
“O! hush! hush!” cried Elinor, with her finger on her lip, as the rich mellow strains floated through the corridor, “I don’t think I ever heard such a lovely voice before. Whose on earth can it be?”
The words of the song were in Spanish, and the only one they could recognise was the refrain of, “Seralie! Seralie!” But the melody was wild, pathetic, and passionate, and the singer’s voice was touching beyond description.
“Some professional must have arrived at the Hotel,” said Margaret, “I am sure that is not the singing of an amateur. But I hope she will not practise at night, and keep baby awake!”
Elinor laughed.
“O! you mother!” she said, “I thought you were lamenting just now that your ewe lamb slept too much! For my part, I should like to be lulled to sleep each night by just such strains as those. Listen, Margaret! She has commenced another song. Ah! Gounod’s delicious ‘Ave Maria.’ How beautiful!”