Entends tu ma pensée qui le réspond tout bas? Ton doux chant me rappelle les plus beaux de mes jours.
"My mother's voice," said Peter, in bewildered accents; and he dropped his eyeglass.
The canon showed a presence of mind that seldom distinguished him.
He hurried away the old ladies, protesting, into the drawing-room, and closed the door behind him.
Peter scarcely noticed their absence.
Ah! le rire fidèle prouve un coeur sans détours, Ah! riez, riez—ma belle—riez, riez toujours,
sang Lady Mary.
"I never heard my mother sing before," said Peter.
CHAPTER XI
Lady Mary came down the oak staircase singing. The white draperies of her summer gown trailed softly on the wide steps, and in her hands she carried a quantity of roses. A black ribbon was bound about her waist, and seemed only to emphasize the slenderness of her form. Her brown hair was waved loosely above her brow; it was not much less abundant, though much less bright, than in her girlhood. The freshness of youth had gone for ever; but her loveliness had depended less upon that radiant colouring which had once been hers than upon her clear-cut features, and exquisitely shaped head and throat. Her blue eyes looked forth from a face white and delicate as a shell cameo, beneath finely pencilled brows; but they shone now with a new hopefulness—a timid expectancy of happiness; they were no longer pensive and downcast as Peter had known them best.