Then Marcia, an eager light in her eyes, sprang up and went to the piano, and began to play softly and sing the tender words she had sung once before when he was listening and she knew it not.
“Dearest, believe,
When e’er we part:
Lonely I grieve,
In my sad heart:—”
Kate, standing within the chintz curtains across the yard shedding angry tears upon her purple silk, heard presently the sweet tones of the piano, which might have been hers; heard her sister’s voice singing, and began to understand that she must bear the punishment of her own rash deeds.
The room had grown from a purple dusk into quiet darkness while Marcia was singing, for the sun was almost down when they walked home. When the song was finished David stood half wistfully looking at Marcia for a moment. Her eyes shone to his through the dusk like two bright stars. He hesitated as though he wanted to say something more, and then thought better of it. At last he stooped and lifted her hand from the keys and led her toward the door.
“You must go to sleep at once,” he said gently. “You’ll need all the rest you can get.[”] He lighted a candle for her and said good-night with his eyes as well as his lips. Marcia felt that she was moving up the stairs under a spell of some gentle loving power that surrounded her and would always guard her.
And it was about this time that Miranda, having been sent over to take a forgotten piece of bride’s cake to Marcia, and having heard the piano, and stolen discreetly to the parlor window for a moment, returned and detailed for the delectation of that most unhappy guest Mrs. Leavenworth why she could not get in and would have to take it over in the morning:
“The window was open in the parlor and they were in there, them two, but they was so plum took up with their two selves, as they always are, that there wasn’t no use knockin’ fer they’d never hev heard.”