He felt a great curiosity over the young man who had touched Viola’s heart, when the proudest and the richest had sued to her in vain.
“Yet most probably he is not worthy of the prize,” he thought, vehemently. “Some handsome, flippant youth, such as most often takes the fancy of very young girls.”
But it gave him a pang to think that his own years numbered thirty.
“Quite an old man in her eyes, very likely,” he thought, ruefully, as he moved a little nearer the piano to watch her face while she sang.
Her singing was one of the many rare gifts the good fairies had brought to Viola’s cradle at her birth. Her voice was a rare soprano, full of passion and feeling, and it thrilled every heart as she sang:
“‘There lived a lady long ago,
Her heart was sad and dark—ah, me!
Dark with a single secret woe
That none could ever see.
“‘She left her home, she lost her pride,