'Was it in a dream?' she asked, softly.
'Perhaps.'
'I found them in an old album, in which they were written by a friend years ago.'
'What friend?' asked Dalton, almost mechanically.
'That matters little now, nor could it interest you.'
'It does—it does, because I knew that song well years ago, as you say.'
Her eyelashes quivered, even her hands trembled with some real or perhaps pretended emotion, and she cut short the subject by dashing at once into a piece of Verdi's music, and by her brilliancy and sparkle she seemed to be absorbing Dalton entirely now, greatly to the dismay of Jerry, who was one of her bondsmen.
Mrs. Trelawney, who had undoubtedly been studying the former, saw that he was in many ways an interesting man, whose face and bearing indicated that he had seen much of the world, much of human life, and done all that a soldier might do in it—that there was at times something of restlessness and impatience in his eyes and on his lips, as of a man who had a secret, the clue to which she was curious to find.
When Alison took her place at the piano, where Goring posted himself on duty to turn the leaves (old Lord Cadbury knew not a note of music luckily), Mrs. Trelawney drew her daughter towards her, and said—
'This is my little girl, Captain Dalton. Give your hand, child.'