When we assembled in the drawing-room, Isabel opened a new battery of fascination that was perhaps the most formidable of all. She began to sing. The excitement of the jewels, and the sympathetic audience, and the conscious triumph of the hour, all added, no doubt, to the power and brilliancy of her voice, which sounded richer, fuller, more entrancing than I had ever heard it before. She sang all sorts of songs. The admiral asked for a sea-song. Isabel knew plenty, comic and dramatic, from “Rule Britannia” down to “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” which she rang out with a rollicking zest and spirit that fairly intoxicated the old sailor.
Sir Simon enjoyed an English ballad and an Irish melody. The siren gave him every one he asked for, old and new. In fact, she surpassed herself in witchery and skill, and one was at a loss which to admire most, the artless grace of the woman or the gifts and accomplishments of the artist. The evening passed rapidly away, and it was past midnight before any one thought of stirring.
“Clide,” said my step-mother next morning, as she was leaving the breakfast-room where Isabel and her guests were loitering over their tea-cups, while I read the Times in [pg 740] the window, “I wish to speak to you. Come to me in the library.”
And without waiting for an answer, she walked out. There was no reason why this commonplace invitation should have brought a sensation of cold down my back, and of my heart dropping down into my boots; but unaccountably this double phenomenon was effected in my person. I made a pretence of going through the leaders before I rose, and then, yawning to give myself an air of perfect satiety and ennui, I sauntered out of the breakfast-room, and bent my steps towards the audience-chamber.
“Clide,” began Mrs. de Winton, when I had closed the door and established myself on the hearth-rug, with my back to the fire, “where did your wife learn singing?”
“Why, in London, I suppose. Where else should she learn it?”
“Did you ask her?” inquired my inquisitor.
“It never occurred to me. Why should it?”
Mrs. de Winton looked at me curiously—not scornfully, as she was accustomed to do when I committed myself to any ultra-foolish remark. Indeed, I thought her face wore an expression gentler and kinder than I remembered to have seen there since when a child I had seen her look at my father. She said nothing for a minute. Then fixing her eyes on me with a glance that sent my heart right out through my heels: