“Precisely so,” said the perfumed little marquise, “but monsieur is jealous, for my Yankee is very handsome, but disdainful, à briser le coeur—Monsieur D’Arcy.”
“D’Arcy,” exclaimed Evelyn, “I expect him here to-night. Madame de Villiers has requested permission to present him, and——”
At this moment the folding doors were thrown open, and a charming and aristocratic looking elderly lady, richly but simply attired, entered leaning on the arm of a gentleman, whom she presented with much empressement to the lady of the house.
“Talk of his Satanic Majesty,” whispered the Englishman, while a smile might be perceived on more than one pair of rosy lips, as the unconscious object of all this persiflage advanced into the charmed circle and gracefully paid his devoirs to its presiding genius.
Philip D’Arcy was one of those rarely endowed beings who, at first sight, impress you with a sense of power—you feel you are in the presence of one born to command. Where this moral force is combined with magnetic influence, or odic affinity, if you please so to term that irresistible attraction we all have felt, more or less at times, then the fascination of such a being is irresistible. He can draw you according to the degree of your sensitive nature, into his sphere, as into a vortex. Nor can you escape.—Fatal gift, if dissevered from heart and principle!
Mr. D’Arcy may have been about thirty; slightly above the medium stature, his erect and lofty bearing gave the idea of greater height than he actually possessed. But for this too—the extreme delicacy of his form, (a defect common to the transatlantic race of the Northern States), might perhaps, have been considered as somewhat detracting from the manliness of his appearance. To say that the features were chiselled, were little. Intellect sat enthroned on the regal brow, and the deep-set eyes—calm, blue, and unfathomable as the ocean—seemed the fitting mirror of “the human soul divine.” The lips firmly closed, pale, and somewhat severe in their habitual expression, could, nevertheless, occasionally wear a smile of rare beauty. The complexion, white as Parian marble, harmonized well with the crisply curling locks, and the full beard, of that cold, brown tint, which almost universally accompanies the refined style of male beauty. Mr. D’Arcy engaged Evelyn in that light conversation which, well talked, has so much charm, and beneath which occasionally runs a vein of the deepest sentiment or the richest humor. But the tête-à-tête was not of long duration.
Most pressing entreaties drew our heroine to the harp, before which Ella was seated, having already commenced the exquisite accompaniment which preludes the “willow song” of the gentle Desdemona. Ella was now in her fifteenth year. The warm sun of Italy had almost visibly ripened the child of a year since into premature womanhood. Though of a form so slight as to appear almost ethereal, she was already taller than her mother, and so pure was her girlish beauty, so infantine her air of candid innocence, you might have fancied her the youngest and loveliest of the nymphs of Diana. Her small, Grecian head seemed actually bending under the weight of the rich masses of soft, blond hair, which formed a triple crown above the classic brow, and fastened in a knot behind, fell in a luxuriance of clustering curls to the slender throat.
Though like in feature, Ella formed a striking contrast to her mother; and for the first time I confessed that it were difficult to decide which might bear the palm, the dazzling beauty and ever-varying expression of the still young matron, or the timid, retiring loveliness of the girl. The one appeared as a royal rose, in all her splendor; the other, a tender bud, shrinking even from the kiss of the sunbeam—the former, a gorgeous tropical plant, whose rare beauty can only be equalled by its fragrance; the latter, a sweet and modest lily, hiding amid its leaves in the greenest and most sequestered dell, haunted alone by fairy footsteps.
Evelyn had never sung so well. The rich tones of her voice vibrated with sentiment, as she portrayed the sorrows of the loving but forsaken wife. The audience forgot to applaud, (the greatest compliment that can be paid to a singer.) The lovely minstrel’s own eyes were humid with emotion. Ella looked a coldness she perhaps did not feel. Mr. D’Arcy advanced to the harp.
“Madame,” he said, “compliment to you would be misplaced. The genius of Rossini has found in your own a worthy interpreter. You have sang as he must have desired in his moments of deepest inspiration—when the ideal descending embraced the real. Nay,”—as she prepared to disclaim the praise so delicious to a true artiste, from one whose taste and judgment is felt to be unimpeachable—“nay, fairest songstress,”—and he smiled that smile of rare fascination which thrilled to the very inmost of her being—“if I have praised, it is because I have felt the pathos of those sympathetic tones, the poetry breathing through each phrase of melody, and I,” he added, as if to himself, “so rarely indulge in the luxury of emotion. But pray, Mrs. Travers, present me to the young lady who has so ably seconded you.”