'Any—well, the old, old one of which you sang a verse to me the other evening in the lawn.'
'Do you really wish it?' she asked, looking round at him with half-drooped lashes, and an earnest expression in her dark, starry eyes.
'I do, indeed, Hester—for "Auld Langsyne."' So she at once gave her whole skill and power to the Jacobite air and the simple, old song which ran thus
'The visions of the buried past
Come thronging, dearer far
Than joys the present hour can give,
Than present objects are.
I love to dwell among their shades,
That open to my view;
The dreams of perished men, and years,
And bygone glory, too.
'For though such retrospect is sad,
It is a sadness sweet,
The forms of those whom we revere,
In memory to meet.
Since nothing in this changing world
Is constant but decay;
And early flowers but bloom the first,
To pass the first away!'
As the little song closed, the girl's voice, full as she was of her own thoughts, became exquisitely sweet, even sad.
'Hester, thank you, dear,' said Roland, laying a hand on her soft shoulder, with a sudden gush of unusual tenderness. 'The early flowers that bloomed so sweetly with us have not yet passed away, surely, Hester?'
'I hope not, Roland,' she replied, in a low voice.
'And I, too, hope not,' said he, stooping, and careless of the eyes of Sir Harry, who had been drumming time to the air on a teapoy, he pressed his lips to the straight white division between her close and rich dark hair.
As he did so he felt her thrill beneath the touch of his lips, and though his nonchalant air of indifference was gone just then he said nothing more, but he thought: