“There is no one here who has the leisure or the disposition to contest your rights, you perceive,” said Mabel, running through a laughing summary of their companions' occupations.
“Betrothals are epidemic in this household and neighborhood,” Winston was writing. “There are no fewer than three pairs of turtles cooing down stairs as I pen this to you, my bird of paradise. The case that next to mine—to ours—commands my interest is that of my sister. I came home to learn that the little Mabel I used to hold on my knee had entered into an engagement—conditional upon my sanction—with that traditional tricky personage, a Philadelphia lawyer—Mr. Frederic Chilton, at the door of whose manifold perfections, as set forth by my loquacious aunt, you may lay the blame of this delayed epistle. I know nothing of this aspirant to the dignity of brotherhood with myself, saving the facts that he is tolerably good looking, claims to be the scion of an old Maryland family, and that self-conceit is apparently his predominant quality.”
“What is that?” asked Frederic, halting before the windows, of the drawing-room, as a wild, sorrowful strain, like the wail of a breaking heart, arose upon the waveless air.
Rosa was a vocalist of note in her circle, and she had never rendered anything with more effect than she did the song to which even the preoccupied strollers among the garden borders stayed their steps to listen. Through the open casement Mabel and her lover could see the face of the musician, slightly uplifted toward the moonlight; her eyes, dark and dreamy, as under the cloud of many years of weary waiting and final hopelessness. Her articulation was always pure, but the passionate emphasis of every word constrained the breathless attention of her audience to the close of the simple lay:
“Thy name was once the magic spell
By which my thoughts were bound;
And burning dreams of light and love
Were wakened by the sound.
My heart beat quick when stranger-tongues,
With idle praise or blame,
Awoke its deepest thrill of joy
To tremble at thy name.
“Long years, long years have passed away,
And altered is thy brow;
And we who met so fondly once
Must meet as strangers now.
The friends of yore come 'round me still,
But talk no more of thee,
'Twere idle e'en to wish it now,
For what art thou to me?”
“Yet still thy name—thy blessed name!
My lonely bosom fills,
Like an echo that hath lost itself
Among the distant hills,
That still, with melancholy note,
Keeps faintly lingering on,
When the joyous sound that woke it first
Is gone—forever gone!”
“A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation of a dying bugle-echo!” said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the writing he had suspended for a minute. “That girl should take to the stage. If one did not know better, her eyes and singing together would delude him into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred evidently believes that she has, and that the patient labor of love will win it for himself. Bah!”
Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation, as “honest Alfred” made a motion to take in his the hand lying prone and passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant and tender, in withdrawing.
“We understand the signs of the times,” whispered Frederic, at the upper turn of their promenade. “Heaven bless all true lovers under the sun!”
“Don't!” said Rosa, vehemently, snatching away her hand from her suitor's hold. “Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall scream! I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart or in the brain—if you have any!”
Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber.