Du Meresq wondered what had jarred those silvery tones, and stolen the melody from the voice he had once thought almost seraphic.  Music, and especially Bluebell’s, had ever a potent charm for him.  She had abandoned the song at the end of the verse, and glided without stopping, into an instrumental piece.  There was a subdued hum of voices, but Bertie’s was not among them, and Bluebell knew he was listening as of old.  She had arranged some variations to their favourite valse, and some impulse made her select that.  Keeping the subject cautiously back, and only allowing suggestions of it to steal into the modulations, it seemed like fugitive snatches of an air borne on a gust of wind, and overcome by nearer sounds,—­the breeze in the trees, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the brawling of a brook.

Bertie listened curiously, thought he had caught the air, lost it, and doubted, till he recognised, in the mocking melody that continually eluded him, the valse he had so often danced with Bluebell.  He shot one glance of intelligence at her as she finished, but Lascelles, who could not bear the piece, was so loud in admiration, and found so much to say about it, that Du Meresq could not have got in a word had he wished it.

Bluebell turned impatiently away, and snatching up some work, went to a secluded part of the room, under cover of requiring a shaded lamp there.  “If there is any truth in magnetic attraction,” thought she, “Captain Lascelles shall not come near me, and Bertie shall.”  She excluded every other thought from her mind, and willed steadily.  Du Meresq became restless, rose from his chair, and stood aimlessly looking at something on a table.  Bluebell continued her mesmeric efforts, every fibre quivering.  He was coasting in her direction; in another instant he would be close, and have sat down on the sofa by her.  Then she looked up, and their eyes met and mingled.  It might have been for half-an-hour to her overwrought sensations; the past was forgotten,—­she was gazing in a trance.  What impelled Mrs. Rolleston at that moment to say,—­“I heard from Cecil this afternoon, Bertie, and if they catch the boat at ——­, they will be here to-morrow evening?”

The passionate eyes drowning themselves in the love light of Bluebell’s became thoughtful and colder.  The spell was broken.  Du Meresq turned away, and began talking to his sister about the expected travellers.

The reaction was painful as the killing of a nerve, and the cause of it so cruel, that she made no attempt to endure it.  A swift glance round showed her she was unobserved, and springing to the door, she fled from the room, to weep out her blue eyes in senseless, hopeless repining.

No one noticed her exit but Lascelles, who, going through his social devoirs with mechanical propriety, had his powers of observation quite disengaged.