By all token-flow’rs that tell
(Word can never speak so well!)
By love’s changing joy and woe,
Zoë mou, sas agapo!”
She sang the lines with a strange tenderness—a haunting accent of refrain, that had insensibly moved every one in the room, and surprised for the moment even her own matter-of-fact husband. A womanly softness had misted Lady Jersey’s gaze, and Annabel Milbanke looked quickly and curiously up at the singer as she paused, a spot of color in her cheeks and her hazel eyes large and bright.
There was a moment of silence—a blank which Hobhouse broke:
“He wrote that when we were travelling together in Albania. I’m glad I sent it to you, Lady Caroline. I didn’t know how beautiful it was.”
Miss Milbanke turned her head.
“So that is George Gordon’s,” she said. She had felt a slight thrill, an emotion new to her, while the other sang. “Mr. Hobhouse, what does he look like?”
The young man, who was by nature and liking something of an artist, took a folded paper from his wallet and spread it out beneath a lamp.