'Pardon me.'
'She is thinking of her dead husband, no doubt. Dear me, if this should prove a case!' thought the little match-maker, who saw that as the luncheon proceeded Mrs. Trelawney was all gaiety, smiles, and brilliance, and too evidently leaving nothing undone by sallies of wit to fascinate Dalton; and Alison felt grateful to her that by her gaiety she had made the little luncheon quite a success, as she felt it to have been when all returned to the drawing-room to have some music.
'Now, Laura dear,' said she, 'we all look to you first,' and Dalton led the widow to the piano, and she began to play readily with great brilliancy, force, and execution some very rare and difficult pieces of music, while he stood by and turned over the leaves; and when pressed to sing she began at once a little ballad the words of which were curious, and went to a singularly slow, sad, and wailing air:—
'Think not of me in summer's blush,
When flowers around thee spring,
And warbling birds on every bush
Their sweetest music sing.
Think not of me, when winter stern,
His icy throne uprears,
And long lost friends with joy return,
To tell of other years.
'But when the sighing breezes own
Sad autumn's blighting sway,
And withered flowers and leaves are strewn,
In silence o'er thy way;
Then think of me! for withered lies
The dearest hope I nursed;
And I have seen, with bitter sighs,
My brightest dream dispersed.'
Other verses—of which these are a sample—followed, and her voice, tender, plaintive, half passionate, and somewhat piteous, gave a powerful effect to the words, to which Tony Dalton seemed to listen like a man in a dream as he hung over her.
'Oh, Laura,' exclaimed Alison, hurrying to her side, with a merry little laugh, 'that melodramatic ditty is most unlike you. Where, in the name of goodness, did you pick it up?'
'I have heard that song long, long ago, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Captain Dalton, trying to pull himself together.
'When?' asked the singer, turning her eyes upon him with one of their most effective glances under lashes long and dark.
'I cannot say,' replied the officer; 'but I have heard these verses sung by a voice so like yours that I am bewildered.'