As he spoke, they all heard Lady Mary’s voice in the corridor above.  She was humming a song, and as she neared the open staircase the words of her song came very distinctly to their ears—­

  Entends tu ma pensee qui le respond tout bas?
  Ton doux chant me rappelle les plus beaux de mes jours.

“My mother’s voice,” said Peter, in bewildered accents; and he dropped his eyeglass.

The canon showed a presence of mind that seldom distinguished him.

He hurried away the old ladies, protesting, into the drawing-room, and closed the door behind him.

Peter scarcely noticed their absence.

    Ah! le rire fidele prouve un coeur sans detours,
    Ah! riez, riez—­ma belle—­riez, riez toujours,

sang Lady Mary.

“I never heard my mother sing before,” said Peter.

CHAPTER XI

Lady Mary came down the oak staircase singing.  The white draperies of her summer gown trailed softly on the wide steps, and in her hands she carried a quantity of roses.  A black ribbon was bound about her waist, and seemed only to emphasize the slenderness of her form.  Her brown hair was waved loosely above her brow; it was not much less abundant, though much less bright, than in her girlhood.  The freshness of youth had gone for ever; but her loveliness had depended less upon that radiant colouring which had once been hers than upon her clear-cut features, and exquisitely shaped head and throat.  Her blue eyes looked forth from a face white and delicate as a shell cameo, beneath finely pencilled brows; but they shone now with a new hopefulness—­a timid expectancy of happiness; they were no longer pensive and downcast as Peter had known them best.

The future had been shrouded by a heavy mist of hopelessness always—­for Lady Mary.  But the fog had lifted, and a fair landscape lay before her.  Not bright, alas! with the brightness and the promise of the morning-time; but yet—­there are sunny afternoons; and the landscape was bright still, though long shadows from the past fell across it.

Peter saw only that his mother, for some extraordinary reason, looked many years younger than when he had left her, and that she had exchanged her customary dull, old-fashioned garb for a beautiful and becoming dress.  He gave an involuntary start, and immediately she perceived him.

She stretched out her arms to him with a cry that rang through the rafters of the hall.  The roses were scattered.

“My boy!  O God, my darling boy!”

In the space of a flash—­a second—­Lady Mary had seen and understood.  Her arms were round him, and her face hidden upon his empty sleeve.  She was as still as death.  Peter stooped his head and laid his cheek against her hair; he felt for one fleeting moment that he had never known before how much he loved his mother.