"You know Doctor Nestley, of course?" he said, looking keenly at her face, from whence the red flush had died away.
"Yes, I met him a few days ago; he was in the church when Mr. Blake was singing," observed Cecilia, in a low tone. "I heard him speak--what a beautiful voice."
"Ah! I know the reason of the blush, now," thought Beaumont; "she loves him. Good Heavens! what a hopeless passion! She loves Nestley, and he loves Una Challoner. How tricky Dan Cupid is, to be sure."
As he had made no answer, the blind girl went on speaking.
"As I cannot see a face, I always guess what it is like by the voice. Doctor Nestley has a beautiful speaking voice--is his face handsome?"
"Rather handsome," said Beaumont, now seized with a cruel desire to fan the flame of hopeless love which burned in this blind woman's heart. "Yes, I suppose a woman would call his face handsome--but it's rather sad."
"Sad!" echoed Cecilia, in a startled tone; "why is his face sad?"
"Ouf!" he replied, coolly, "how should I know?--because his soul is sad, I presume. The face is the index of the mind, you know. I daresay it runs this way--his face is sad because his soul is sad, and the soul-sadness is caused by a sad life."
"Is he unhappy, then?" asked Cecilia, breathlessly.
"I should say not--now," said Beaumont, with emphasis, "but when I knew him in London a few years ago he had met with many reverses of fortune."
"Poor Doctor Nestley," sighed the blind girl, seized with a sudden desire to comfort this unhappy man, of whom she knew absolutely nothing save that he had a beautiful speaking voice. "Do you know his story."
Whereupon Beaumont, who knew from Shakespeare that "pity is akin to love" set himself to work to awaken Cecilia Mosser's pity, and told a marvellously pathetic story of Nestley's early life in which truth and fiction were so dexterously blended that the hero himself would have been puzzled to say which was real and which false. He attained his object, however, for he saw by the varied emotions that passed over the blind girl's expressive face how moved she was by the story.
"Poor Doctor Nestley," she said again, "poor, poor Doctor Nestley."
"Oh, but all his misery is past now," said Beaumont, lightly, "he has weathered the storm, and will, no doubt, some day marry a woman who will make him happy."