It was a wonderful piece of singing. In the first lines her voice rose clear and confident, reassuring against the mere physical perils. Then with the faintest change of tone, just sufficient to mark the shift in the form of menace, she sang the third line; and let a tinge of melancholy creep into the next. With the last couplet something new came into the music, possibly a drop into the minor; and her voice seemed to fill with an echo of all lost hopes and spent delights. Then it rose again, full and strong in the mandatory lines of the final verse, set to a different air, till at last it died away once more with infinite tenderness:
“Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave.”
I sat spellbound after she had ended. It was wonderful art. She closed the piano and rose from her seat.
“I can’t imagine why you dislike that air,” said Nordenholt.
“Oh, it’s so gloomy, Uncle Stanley. I don’t care to think about things like that.”
“Gloomy? You misread it, I’m sure. I wish I could be sure of Fidele’s luck.
‘Fear not slander, censure rash.’
Which of us can feel sure of being free from these? Not I. And what better could one wish for in the end?
‘And renownèd be thy grave.’