“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Is that what you mean?”
“It is—or rather, it was a minute ago; for now I perceive that our modern Titania is not satisfied with such a realm alone. Fortunately, however, yours is not comprised within the mere compass of a human heart—golden though it be—and I feel sure that you will wield your scepter in right royal fashion.”
“You like hyperbole?” she retorted, with some pique. “Or has your kinsman commissioned you to plead a cause already won?”
“I am a free-lance, madame, in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, or in that of Clémence Isaure, at your service or your choice. But, seeing you lost in dreams, I ventured to come and offer my belated congratulations, since the other night you were so surrounded that I did not get a chance to speak to you.”
“I accept them all the more gratefully, as it was in your house that my good luck came to me, Monsieur le Marquis!”
“Don’t mention it!” retorted Régis, dropping all poetry of tone as if he had suddenly been stung by a bee. “Besides, if you have any one to thank, address yourself to the ‘Gamin,’ your eternal and loyal champion.”
“I was not aware that I needed one!” was the spirited answer; and Laurence let her swiftly hardening eye travel to the piano, at which Marguerite had just seated herself. Neville and Preston Wynne stood on either side of her, imploring her to sing, and she was smiling up at them.
“Don’t let yourself be implored!” her father called across to her. “You are not yet grown up enough for that. Let us have ‘Pauvre P’tit Gas!’ mon ‘Gamin’!”
Obediently Marguerite pulled off her long white gloves and began to play a prelude in minor that seemed a lost echo of stormy seas, filled now with the voices of great waves against a rock-bound coast, and again with the sweep of the wind in the rigging of a doomed ship.
Complete and absolute silence fell upon the room at the first notes of her surprisingly deep contralto: