The pretty face was full of dreamy tenderness, the eyes lit up witchingly.  She pulled herself up suddenly, and stole a shy glance at her auditor.

“Yes, yes, go on,” he said; “tell me all you feel about the music.”

“And there’s one song you sometimes play that makes me feel floating on and on like a great white swan.”

She hummed a few bars of the Gondel-Lied—­flawlessly.

“Dear me! you have an ear!” he said, pinching it.  “And how did you like what I was playing just now?” he went on, growing curious to know how his own improvisations struck her.

“Oh, I liked it so much,” she whispered back, enthusiastically; “because it reminded me of my favourite one—­every moment I did think—­I thought—­you were going to come into that.”

The whimsical sparkle leapt into his eyes.  “And I thought I was so original,” he murmured.

“But what I liked best,” she began, then checked herself, as if suddenly remembering she had never made a spontaneous remark before, and lacking courage to establish a precedent.

“Yes—­what you liked best?” he said encouragingly.

“That song you sang this afternoon,” she said shyly.

“What song?  I sang no song,” he said, puzzled for a moment.

“Oh, yes!  That one about—­

  “‘Kiss me, dear love, good-night.’

“I was going upstairs but it made me stop just here—­and cry.”

He made his comic grimace.

“So it was you Beethoven was barking at!  And I thought he had an ear!  And
I thought you had an ear!  But no!  You’re both Philistines after all. 
Heigho!”

She looked sad.  “Oughtn’t I to ha’ liked it?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, yes,” he said reassuringly; “it’s very popular.  No drawing-room is without it.”

She detected the ironic ring in his voice.  “It wasn’t so much the music,” she began apologetically.

“Now—­now you’re going to spoil yourself,” he said.  “Be natural.”

“But it wasn’t,” she protested.  “It was the words—­”

“That’s worse,” he murmured below his breath.

“They reminded me of my mother as she laid dying.”

“Ah!” said Lancelot.

“Yes, sir, mother was a long time dying—­it was when I was a little girl and I used to nurse her—­I fancy it was our little Sally’s death that killed her, she took to her bed after the funeral and never left it till she went to her own,” said Mary Ann, with unconscious flippancy.  “She used to look up to the ceiling and say that she was going to little Sallie, and I remember I was such a silly then, I brought mother flowers and apples and bits of cake to take to Sally with my love.  I put them on her pillow, but the flowers faded and the cake got mouldy—­mother was such a long time dying—­and at last I ate the apples myself, I was so tired of waiting.  Wasn’t I silly?” And Mary Ann laughed a little laugh with tears in it.  Then growing grave again, she added:  “And at last, when mother was really on the point of death, she forgot all about little Sally and said she was going to meet Tom.  And I remember thinking she was going to America—­I didn’t know people talk nonsense before they die.”