“You used to sing some very pretty songs for us, my love,” said Miss Clarissa. “I wonder if you remember the one Hector was so fond of? Something very sweet, about drinking to somebody with your eyes, and he would not ask for wine. I really forget the rest.”
Lisbeth, who was turning over a pile of her old music, looked up at Anstruthers with a civil, wicked smile.
“Did I sing, ‘Drink to me only’?” she said. “And was it a favorite of yours? I wonder if it is here? How nice that Aunt Clarissa should remind us of it!”
She drew out the yellow old sheet from under the rest of the music in a minute more, her smile not without a touch of venomous amusement. How she had loathed it a few years ago!
“I wonder if I could sing it,” she said; and, prompted by some daring demon, she sat down at the piano, and sang it from beginning to end. But, by the time she had struck the last chord, her mood changed. She got up, with a little frown, and she did not look at Anstruthers at all.
“Bah!” she said. “What nonsense it is!” And she pushed the poor, old, faded sheet impatiently aside.
Anstruthers moved a step forward, and laid his hand upon it.
“Will you give it to me?” he asked, with a suppressed force in his manner, quite new.
“Why?” she demanded, indifferently.
“For a whim’s sake,” he answered. “There is no accounting for tastes. Perhaps I may fancy that I should like to learn it.”