“Mother—mother—mother!”
Again, after a preluding silence, the guitar as magically responded as before; the sparks quivered along its strings; and again Pierre felt as in the immediate presence of the spirit.
“Shall I, mother?—Art thou ready? Wilt thou tell me?—Now? Now?”
These words were lowly and sweetly murmured in the same way with the word mother, being changefully varied in their modulations, till at the last now, the magical guitar again responded; and the girl swiftly drew it to her beneath her dark tent of hair. In this act, as the long curls swept over the strings of the guitar, the strange sparks—still quivering there—caught at those attractive curls; the entire casement was suddenly and wovenly illumined; then waned again; while now, in the succeeding dimness, every downward undulating wave and billow of Isabel’s tossed tresses gleamed here and there like a tract of phosphorescent midnight sea; and, simultaneously, all the four winds of the world of melody broke loose, and again as on the previous night, only in a still more subtile, and wholly inexplicable way, Pierre felt himself surrounded by ten thousand sprites and gnomes, and his whole soul was swayed and tossed by supernatural tides; and again he heard the wondrous, rebounding, chanted words:
| “Mystery! Mystery! |
| Mystery of Isabel! |
| Mystery! Mystery! |
| Isabel and Mystery!” |
| Mystery! |
III.
ALMOST deprived of consciousness by the spell flung over him by the marvelous girl, Pierre unknowingly gazed away from her, as on vacancy; and when at last stillness had once more fallen upon the room—all except the stepping—and he recovered his self-possession, and turned to look where he might now be, he was surprised to see Isabel composedly, though avertedly, seated on the bench; the longer and fuller tresses of her now ungleaming hair flung back, and the guitar quietly leaning in the corner.
He was about to put some unconsidered question to her, but she half-anticipated it by bidding him, in a low, but nevertheless almost authoritative tone, not to make any allusion to the scene he had just beheld.
He paused, profoundly thinking to himself, and now felt certain that the entire scene, from the first musical invocation of the guitar, must have unpremeditatedly proceeded from a sudden impulse in the girl, inspired by the peculiar mood into which the preceding conversation, and especially the handling of the guitar under such circumstances, had irresistibly thrown her.