“Of the latter no one can accuse Mr. Raleigh!” said Mr. Laudersdale, hotly, forgetting himself for once.

Mrs. Laudersdale lifted her large eyes and laid them on her husband’s face.

“Excuse me! excuse me!” said the gentleman, with natural misconception.  “I was not aware that he was a friend of yours.”  And taking a lady on his arm, he withdrew.

“Nor is he!” said Mr. Laudersdale, in lowest tones, replying to his wife’s gaze, and for the first time intimating his feeling.  “Never, never, can I repair the ruin he has made me!”

Mrs. Laudersdale rose and stretched out her arm, blindly.

“The room is quite dark,” she murmured; “the flowers must soil the air.  Will you take me up-stairs?”

Meanwhile, the unconscious object of their remark was turning over a pile of pages with one hand, while the other trifled along the gleaming keys.

“Here it is,” said he, drawing one from the others, and arranging it before him,—­a gondel-lied.

There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed.  Here a jet of tune was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in clustering chords.  Now the boat fled through melancholy narrow ways of pillared pomp and stately beauty, now floated off on the wide lagoons alone with the stars and sea.  Into this broke the passion of the gliding lovers, deep and strong, giving a soul to the whole, and fading away again, behind its wild beating,—­with the silence of lapping ripple and dipping oar.

Mrs. Purcell, standing beside the player, laid a careless arm across the instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with the sun’s rays.  Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth Song.  The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again.  Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took up the thread of her song again where it was broken, and carried it through to the end.  Then Mr. Raleigh tossed the gondel-lied aside, and rising, they continued their stroll.

“You have more than your share of the good things of life, Raleigh,” said Mr. McLean, as the person addressed poured out wine for Mrs. Purcell.  “Two affairs on hand at once?  You drink deep.  Light and sparkling,—­thin and tart,—­isn’t it Solomon who forbids mixed drink?”

“I was never the worse for claret,” replied Mr. Raleigh, bearing away the glittering glass.