“A very indifferent performer, Lady Hummington.”
“Lady May Penrose tells a very different tale.”
“Lady May Penrose is too kind to be critical,” said Longcluse; and as he maintained this dialogue, his eye was observing every movement of Alice Arden. She seemed, however, to have quite made up her mind to stand her ground. There was a strange interest, to him, even in being in the same room with her. Perhaps Miss Arden saw that Mr. Longcluse's movements were dependent upon those of the lady whom he accompanied, and might have thought that, the musician having departed, their stay in that room would not be very long.
“I should be so glad to hear you sing, Mr. Longcluse,” pursued Lady Hummington. “You have been in the East, I think; have you any of the Hindostanee songs? There are some, I have read, that embody the theories of the Brahmin philosophy.”
“Long-winded songs, I fancy,” said Mr. Longcluse, laughing; “it is a very voluminous philosophy, but the truth is, I've got a little cold, and I should not like to make a bad impression so early.”
“But surely there are some simple little things, without very much compass, that would not distress you. How pretty those old English songs are that they are collecting and publishing now! I mean songs of Shakespeare's time—Ben Jonson's, Beaumont and Fletcher's, and Massinger's, you know. Some of them are so extremely pretty!”
“Oh! yes, I'll sing you one of those with pleasure,” said he with a strange alacrity, quite forgetting his cold, sitting down at the instrument, and striking two or three fierce chords.
I am sure that most of my readers are acquainted with that pretty old English song, of the time of James the First, entitled, “Once I Loved a Maiden Fair.” That was the song he chose.
Never, perhaps, did he sing so well before, with a fluctuation of pathos and scorn, tenderness and hatred, expressed with real dramatic fire, and with more power of voice than at moments of less excitement he possessed. He sang it with real passion, and produced, exactly where he wished, a strange but unavowed sensation. He omitted one verse, and the song as he delivered it was thus:—
“Once I loved a maiden fair,