“You are tired of my chatter. Come, I will sing to you,” she cried, going with him to the music-room that adjoined the library.
Mr. Maxwell, working diligently among her father’s books, lifted his dark, finely shaped head to listen, and the voice sounded to him like an angel’s, it was so clear and sweet.
“It is Miss Van Lew, I suppose. How rarely she is gifted—queen of song and love and beauty!” he thought; for although he was a stranger to Viola, he had seen her more than once, and the story of her coquetry had reached his ears.
He worked on diligently, but he did not lose one note of her sweet music, or one word of her songs.
“She must be singing to some favored lover,” he said to himself, marking the tenderness that freighted her voice.
By and by the music ceased, and he heard them going out of the room, but he did not know that the girl had said:
“I must stop, for perhaps I am disturbing the young man in the library. Oh, Philip, would it not be great fun to pretend to go in there for a book just to see what he looks like?”
“By no means, Viola. I am sure it would appear to him like vulgar curiosity,” he replied, almost sharply, bringing a quick blush to her brow.
He went away soon after, and Viola left the room to go upstairs to examine some new things just arrived.
Rolfe Maxwell was just going out to his midday luncheon, and they encountered each other in the wide hall.