It was a German song, Schumann’s “Sehnsucht,” that she was singing; it was the first that had come to her mind at Graham’s bidding, and, still preoccupied, she began it almost without thought of the words and sentiment; but she had not sung two lines, when some hidden emotion made itself felt in her face with a quite irresistible enthusiasm and pathos.  These were the words:—­

    “Ich blick’ im mein Herz, und ich blick’ in die Welt,
    Bis vom schwimmenden Auge die Thraene mir faellt: 
    Wohl leuchtet die Ferne mit goldenem Licht,
    Doch haelt mich der Nord, ich erreiche sie nicht. 
    O die Schranken so eng, und die Welt so weit! 
    Und so fluechtig die Zeit, und so fluechtig die Zeit.

    Ich weiss ein Land, wo aus sonnigem Gruen
    Um versunkene Temple die Trauben bluehn,
    Wo die purpurne Woge das Ufer besauemt,
    Und von kommenden Saengern der Lorbeer traeumt;
    Fern lockt es und winkt dem verlangenden Sinn,
    Und ich kann nicht hin—­kann nicht hin!”

As Madelon sang these last words she looked up, and her eyes met Graham’s, as he stood leaning against the piano, gazing at her face.  She blushed scarlet, and stopped suddenly.

“I—­I don’t think I can sing any more,” she said, letting her hands fall from the keys into her lap.  She turned round, and saw Maria looking at her also, watching her and Graham perhaps.  “How hot it is!” she cried, pushing the hair off her forehead with a little impatient gesture. “J’etouffe ici!” And she jumped up quickly and ran out of the room.

Out of the atmosphere of love, and suspicion, and jealousy that was stifling her, into the hall, up the shallow staircase to the long matted passage which ran the length of the house, the bed-rooms opening on to it on either side.  Madelon paced it rapidly for some minutes, then opened a door at the end, and entered the nursery.  Nothing stifling here; a large, cool, airy room, with white blinds drawn down, subduing the full moonlight to a soft gloom, in which one could discern two little beds, each with its small occupant, whose regular breathing told that they had done, for ever, with the cares and sorrows of at least that day.

Madelon stood looking at them, the excitement that had made her cheeks burn, and her pulses throb, subsiding gradually in presence of this subdued, unconscious life.  She smoothed the sheets and counterpane of one little sleeper, who, with bare limbs tossed about, was lying right across the bed, all the careful tuckings-up wofully disarranged; and then, passing on, went into an inner room, that opened out of the larger nursery.  The window was open here to the cool, grey sky, the moonlight shining in on the white curtains, the little white bed at the further end.

“Is that you, Cousin Madelon?” says Madge, raising a brown, shaggy head as Madelon softly opened the door.  “Won’t you come in, please?  I am not asleep.”