'Will you come to my house after school?' he asked in his sweetest tones. 'Will you come and sing with me?'
The frank glad consent of her eyes was answer enough; he named his place of residence, and without another word left the school, nor did he ever return.
There was a beautiful calmness about this girl, a natural freedom from anticipation and tumult; impatience never interrupted her quiet, surprises were impossible with her; all things came to her as if by an appointed sequence of events. Thus this new friend did not startle her, and in all the tedious employments of the school that day she was not for an instant restless.
As soon as the recitations closed, Sara obeyed his request, reached the small house by the water-side, and entered the low room. Fauntleroy was standing by the window, looking out upon the river; as she lingered at the handle of the door, he turned, instantly advanced and led her in with the happiest of smiles, but with no words. He seated himself at the piano, and placed certain vocal exercises before her. Not to his astonishment, since he could have believed her capable of all things, she sang them with entire ease, as her music-teacher, who once had been also his, could have prophesied to him. His fingers lingered on the accompaniment when she had finished, as if loth to conclude. She trembled a minute, half in doubt, and then, her lithe figure swaying to the song, warbled an air more familiar to him than day, because it was his own. The expression with which she rendered his song, the interpretation of all its indefinite grace, could not have been more exquisitely given by the most finished cantatrice alive. He turned in a rapture of admiration.
'It is yours, Sir,' she said. He had not presumed that another soul had knowledge of it.
'And yours! You have made it so!' he replied, seeing her as no pupil, but rather on an equality with himself. 'And you—surely you have melodies where your delights are written down.'
'The clouds, Sir, have neither color nor shape till the sun shines on them; and such as I sing only what is made for us.'
The clock tolled nine before he allowed her to rest, and then conducting her to her home, he returned. A new light had been given to his eye that day; a new fire kindled at his hearth. His heart had been like a flower waiting for the dawn, and that now expanded in all the warmth and beauty of its rich growth. There were but three Fates: the first he had met on the Sunday, now so long ago, when he threw himself upon the organ's universe of sound; his second he knew well he had found to-day, and were she hostile or propitious, still how fair and calm and beautiful! When should he find his third Fate?
(END OF PART FIRST.)