How the heart can melt out at the
finger-points when touching the keys of a sweetly-toned instrument! It
is thrown to the air, and in its plaint makes sweet music of its
melancholy. Like harmonious spirits chanting in their invisibility,
making vocal the very atmosphere, it died away as though going to a
great distance, and stillness was in the whole house. He stole gently
to the door. There seated was Alice; her elbow on her instrument, and
her brow upon her hand. The bell rang for dinner. The repast is over,
and a glass of generous wine sent the rose to the cheeks of Alice, but
enlivened not her eye. Her heart was sad: the eye spoke it but too
plainly, and she looked beautiful beyond comparison. The eye of the
stranger was rivetted upon that drooping lid and more than melancholy
brow.
His situation was a painful one. More than once had he caught the
quick, suspicious glance of the judge flash upon him. He was becoming
an object of interest to more than one in the house; but how different
that interest! How at antipodes the motives of that interest! He knew
too much, and yet he wanted to know more.
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