“Do you sing, Miss Freer?”
She looked up at, him with surprise, but when she saw the perfect good faith in which he had asked the question, she began to laugh in spite of herself.
“Yes,” said she, “I think I have told you before that I sing a little, and if you had been listening you would have heard me singing just now.”
“Were you singing?” he said, “truly I did not know. Certainly I would have listened had I known it was you. I was thinking the other day how odd it was I had never heard you sing.”
“I was not singing alone, just now,” she said, more seriously, “I only took a part in those glees.”
“Ah!” he replied, “then it was not bad of me after all. But I should very much like to hear you sing alone. When Miss Bailey finishes this affair she is playing, will you sing, Miss Freer?”
“Oh, yes, if you like,” she answered lightly. But in a moment a thought struck her, and she added mischievously, “what would you like me to sing, Sir Ralph? Is there any song you think would suit me?”
“Several,” he replied, in the same tone. But as at this moment Miss Bailey’s twirlings and twitchings suddenly ceased, and as Marion rose, he said in a lower voice: “one in particular, but I can’t give it you.”
She seemed as if she hardly heard him, and at a sign from Cissy, took Dora’s place at the piano.
Her voice was certainly not a very powerful one, but neither could it be called weak. It was true and sweet, but its chief beauty was its exceeding freshness. Clear and bright, and yet with an under-tone of almost wild plaintiveness. The sort of voice one would be inclined to describe as more like a young boy’s than a woman’s. It made one think of a bunch of spring field flowers, freshly gathered and sparkling with dew. So, at least, Ralph fancied as he listened, and went on in his own mind to compare Florence Vyse’s rich contralto to a perfectly arranged group of brilliantly coloured and heavily scented exotics. The simile was not however a perfect one, for it did not sufficiently express the tenderness and cultivated refinement of Marion’s singing.