"I wouldn't be too sure of those tartlets, madam," said he. "But I don't believe there is more than a brown sniff coming from the oven."
"Oh lud! if you can sniff the brown, you may swear that the paste is black; you must make allowance for the distance the smell has to travel. Go upstairs; you'll be able to track her by the sound."
The good woman was already at the farther end of the passage to her kitchen before Dick had begun to mount the stairs.
The sound of Betsy's singing went through the house. The song was one of Dr. Arne's, which he had always loved. But had he ever loved the voice till now?
This was his thought while he stood outside the door of the music-room waiting for the song to come to an end.
It seemed to him that her singing of that song had the magical power of bringing before his eyes every day in the past that he had spent near her. The day when he first saw her she had sung that very song. It was at one of the entertainments given by his father in Bath, and he had just left Harrow. Every phrase of that song which now came from her lips renewed his boyish impressions of the girl, her beauty and the witchery of her voice. He could see himself standing before her, silent and shy, when she had come later in the day to have supper at his father's house. He had been silent and shy, but she had been quite self-possessed. It was upon that occasion that Mr. Burke referred to the Linley family as a Nest of Linnets.
Dick remembered how he had wondered why it was that he himself had not said that about the Linleys: why should it be left to Mr. Burke to say it when it was exactly what was in his own mind?
He had loved her then. He recollected how he had struggled hard all the next day to write a poem about her--a song that her father might perhaps set to music to be sung by Betsy herself.
The ghosts of the sweet past days flitted before him while the sound of that song enveloped him, and every spectral day shone white and bright in his memory. For a time he failed to realise that they were merely shadows flitting across his memory. They seemed to him full of life--a heart beating in every one of them. Alas! it was only his own heart that throbbed with those sweet recollections; for when the song faded away and closed in silence, he felt that he was alone. The beautiful creature of those old days had passed away from him and had left him lonely. He had awakened from a dream.