All the gypsy in her was dominant to-night as, with flushed cheeks and glittering eyes, she went up to her harp, and striking a few effective chords, sat down before it, and broke into a Hungarian air, which had greatly taken her fancy among some new music which had arrived from town during her father’s absence. Perhaps her strange meeting with old Sarah Carewe had put the thought of the gypsy race into her head; or else it was that in her present excitable, rebellious, and agitated mood, the wild Zingari music appealed to her feelings; certain it is that she threw all the repressed intensity of her nature into the song. She was an excellent musician, and played from memory, suggesting the air, now wild, now plaintive, by a succession of chords. The words, too, a lament supposed to be uttered by a dying “Egyptian,” chimed in with her own frame of mind sufficiently well to enable her to throw her whole soul into her voice.
Even that well-regulated person, Dr. Morland Graham, was astonished and excited by her performance. How came the daughter of Lady Gwendolen to possess such dramatic intensity and fire? he asked himself, while the girl’s sweet soprano notes clove the air, and the strange wailing pathos of her tones brought actual tears to his eyes.
Two other listeners had entered the room. Stella sang on, unheeding them, while Lord Carthew watched her, entranced in admiration, and her father regarded her with a heavy scowl of intense disapprobation.
The picture she made, sitting there in her slender, girlish beauty, her cheeks pale with excitement, her eyes aglow, her dusky hair framing her small, sensitive face, and that sweet, pathetic voice ringing out the wild love, the longing for liberty, and the loneliness of the dying gypsy—all these things, which filled the other two men present with wondering admiration, irritated Sir Philip beyond measure. How dared she sing gypsy songs in his presence? Above all, how dared she reveal in her singing that warm southern nature which he so strongly mistrusted, and the possession of which in his daughter he regarded as something in the light of a disgrace?
The song ceased. The singer drooped her head, as though exhausted by the effort, while her fingers still lingered about the strings. A burst of applause, coming simultaneously from Lord Carthew and Dr. Graham, caused her to start violently. She had completely forgotten that she was not quite alone.
“I have never heard singing like yours,” the young viscount said, coming to her side. “You made me cry, and I am not very easily moved. It is not only your voice which is lovely, but your expression. Do you know what you made me think of as you sat there, telling of your longing for fresh air and freedom, and the joys of life?”
“No.”
“Of that line I told you of this morning, when Tennyson’s heroine saw the lovers pass:
“ ‘ “I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.’ ”
She looked up at him, and smiled involuntarily. He certainly understood at least a portion of what was in her mind.