“What letter?” asked Mrs. Heath, with amiable curiosity, as she joined them.

“Do you know what letter, Mr. Raleigh?”

“One from India, Madame,” was his response.

“Strange!  Helen gone without permission!  What was in the letter, I wonder.  Do you know what was in the letter, Mr. Raleigh?”

“Congratulations, and a recommendation of Mrs. McLean’s cousin to her good graces,” he said.

“Oh, it was not Helen’s, then?”

“No.”

“My young gentleman’s not in good humor to-night,” whispered Mrs. Heath to Miss Purcell, with a significant nod, and moving off.

“How did you know what was in Mrs. McLean’s letter, Sir?” asked Mary Purcell.

“I conjectured.  In Mrs. Heath’s place, I should have known.”

“There they come!—­you can always tell Mrs. McLean’s laugh.  You’ve lost all the charades, Helen!”

They came in, very gay, and seemed at once to arouse an airier and finer spirit among the humming clusters.  Mr. Laudersdale did not join his wife, but sat on the piazza talking with Mr. McLean.  People were looking at an herbal, others coquetting, others quiet.  Some one mentioned music.  Directly afterward, Mr. Raleigh rose and approached the piano.  Every one turned.  Taking his seat, he threw out a handful of rich chords; the instrument seemed to diffuse a purple cloud; then, buoyed over perfect accompaniment, the voice rose in that one love-song of the world.  What depth of tenderness is there from which the “Adelaide” does not sound?  What secret of tragedy, too?  Singing, he throbbed through it a vitality as if the melody surcharged with beauty grew from his soul, and were his breath of life, indeed.  The thrilling strain came to penetrate and fill one heart; the passionate despair surged round her; the silence following was like the hand that closes the eyes of the dead.

Mr. Raleigh did not rise, nor look up, as he finished.

“How melancholy!” said Helen Heath, breaking the hush.

“All music should be melancholy,” said he.

“How absurd, Roger!” said his cousin.  “There is much music that is only intensely beautiful.”

“Intense beauty at its height always drops in pathos, or rather the soul does in following it,—­since that is infinite, the soul finite.”

“Nonsense!  There’s that song, Number Three in Book One”——­

“I don’t remember it.”

“Well, there’s no pathos there!  It’s just one trill of laughter and merriment, a sunbeam and effect.  Play it, Helen.”

Helen went, and, extending her hands before Mr. Raleigh, played a couple of bars; he continued where she left it, as one might a dream, and, strangely enough, the little, gushing sparkle of joy became a phantom of itself, dissolving away in tears.

“Oh, of course,” said Mrs. McLean, “you can make mouths in a glass, if you please; but I, for one, detest melancholy!  Don’t you, Mrs. Laudersdale?”