"If you were less thrifty, Mr. Warlow, I would suspect you were too fond of poetry to be practical. But I should not throw sarcastic stones at your glass house, for it has been no longer than a month ago that mamma scolded me roundly for forgetting the yeast in my batch of light bread. I had to lay all the blame at the 'open door' of the 'Moated Grange,' which I had been reading. Poor Mariana might well have said, after looking on my leaden loaves:--
'I am aweary, aweary,-- I would that I were dead!'"
While Clifford was making some laughing reply to this bucket of poetical cold water, he and Miss Estill were summoned to the piano, where our young friends were floundering hopelessly through the intricacies of a glee, in which Grace's alto would persist in getting all tangled up with Hugh's baritone, and the cat-calls of Rob's bastard bass and Scott's frantic tenor only served to heighten the confusion, that finally collapsed in subdued shrieks of laughter. But when Miss Estill's dainty fingers rippled over the guitar, and their voices blended with varying degrees of melody as its twanging notes mingled with the mellow tones of the piano, then something like harmony prevailed again. Yet she and Clifford would still exchange amused glances whenever Rob gave vent to a more pronounced caterwaul than usual, or Scott's gosling tenor squawked a wild note of alarm.
"Miss Estill, I am longing to hear you render a Spanish solo; for I never can help the picture of a Castilian maiden playing amid the courts of the Alhambra, rising whenever you take the guitar," said young Warlow, in a low tone.
"My broken Spanish would soon dispel the illusion," she replied, with a soft blush; "but I will give you, instead, a poor translation of a Mexican song;" and in a voice rich with melody and feeling, she sang:--
"There blooms no rose upon the plain, But costs the night a thousand tears,"--
while the guitar rained a shower of soft-dripping music, veined with a thrill of sadness. As her bosom rose and fell with the sweet strains, the ruby heart which clasped the ruff at her slender throat flashed rays of crimson and rose in the stray sunbeams that glinted through the room.
Clifford remained rapt in a reverie as the dreamy music, with a low minor ripple, died away, and the listeners sat in silence a moment, paying a mute tribute to the graceful singer who now was idly toying with the guitar.