"Hush! speak low."
"Which is Leonora's chamber?" asked the voice again.
"Why?" demanded the young girl, in the same low tone, but with strange sensations in her bosom.
"I wish to sing to her," answered the youth, "and to tell her all I dared not tell this evening. I am ordered to Pavia early to-morrow, dear cousin, and must leave you to plead my cause, but I would fain say one word for myself first."
Oh, how Leonora's heart beat.
"Then it is not Bianca," she murmured to herself; "it is not Bianca. The next room on your right," she answered, still speaking low; but suddenly there came upon her a feeling of shame for the deception, and she added, "What is it you would say, Lorenzo? Leonora is here; Bianca has been sleeping for an hour. But don't sing, and speak low. Signor Rovera's apartments are close by."
But Lorenzo would not heed the warning; and though he did not raise his voice to its full power, he sang, in a sweet, low tone, a little canzonetta, which had much currency some few years before in Florence:
"What time the Greek, in days of yore,
Bent down his own, fair work before,
He woke the echoes of the grove
With words like these, 'Oh, could she love!'
"Heaven heard the sculptor's wild desire;
Love warmed the statue with its fire;
But when he saw the marble move,
He asked, still fearful, 'Will she love?'
"She loved--she loved; and wilt thou be
More cold, Madonna, unto me?
Then hear my song, and let me prove
If you can love--if you can love."
"Songs are false--men are falser, Lorenzo," answered Leonora, bending a little from the window: "you will sing that canzonetta to the next pretty eye you see."
"It will be Leonora's then," answered the youth. "Can you not come down, dear Leonora, and let me hear my fate under the olive-trees? I fear to tell you all I feel in this place, lest other ears should be listening. Oh! come down, for I must go hence by daybreak to-morrow."