“It is Miss Cranstoun certainly, but—”
“Oh! spare me a lover’s rhapsodies, old chap. Under the circumstances, you can scarcely expect me to regard her as you do.”
“She is more sorry about the accident than I can possibly tell you, and blames herself entirely——”
“Oh, I dare say. Well, go back and make love to her by all means. What is that?”
The sweet notes of a pure soprano voice were wafted up to them from the drawing-room immediately below. Some one was singing the Lorelei to the accompaniment of harp.
Lord Carthew crossed to the door and held it open. Something wild and plaintive in the quality of Stella’s voice, for he knew well the singer could be none other than she, touched him deeply, and seemed to draw him like a magnet to her side. Holding the door open, he glanced at the bed whereon Hilary lay with closed eyes and frowning brows, as though asleep, an impression which he carried out further by remaining silent when Claud addressed him.
Feeling his conscience freed from responsibility, Lord Carthew returned to the drawing-room. Lady Cranstoun and the doctor were deep in their game of chess, and in the half light he could see Stella seated at the harp, across the strings of which her delicate hands were straying, while the last note of the old German volkslied lingered on her lips, a strangely poetic picture of beauty and harmony which Lord Carthew was destined to carry in his mind for all time.
CHAPTER IV.
ENEMIES.
As Lord Carthew approached, the girl ceased playing.
“Is he better?” she asked. “Will my singing disturb him?”