CHAPTER XXV
Marcia hurried down to her own house early one morning. The phantoms of her experiences in the old Green Tavern were pursuing her.
Once there she could do nothing but go over and over the dreadful things that Harry Temple had said. In vain did she try to work. She went into the library and took up a book, but her mind would wander to David.
She sat down at the piano and played a few tender chords and sang an old Italian song which somebody had left at their house several years before:
“Dearest, believe,
When e’er we part:
Lonely I grieve,
In my sad heart:—”
With a sob her head dropped upon her hands in one sad little crash of wailing tones, while the sound died away in reverberation after reverberation of the strings till Marcia felt as if a sea of sound were about her in soft ebbing, flowing waves.
The sound covered the lifting of the side door latch and the quiet step of a foot. Marcia was absorbed in her own thoughts. Her smothered sobs were mingling with the dying sounds of the music, still audible to her fine ear.