All understood.  He had served the cider that he might join with them in their pledges of friendship and good will without breaking through the rule of abstemiousness in which he was finding so much benefit.

The toasts were clever as well as complimentary, and the table-talk light and sparkling.  Finally both Mrs. Clemm and Virginia arose to clear the table for the dessert.

“You see, my friends, we keep no maid or butler,” said the host, “but I’m sure you will all agree with me in feeling that we would not exchange our two Hebes for any, and they take serving you as a privilege.”

The cake was cut and served with calves-foot jelly—­quivering and ruby red—­and velvety blanc mange.

After supper Virginia’s harp was brought out of its corner and she sang to them.  With adorable sweetness and simplicity she gave each one’s favorite song as it was asked for—­filling all the cottage with her pure sweet tones accompanied by the bell-like, rippling notes of the harp.  The company sat entranced—­all eyes upon the lovely girl from whose throat poured the streams of melody.

She seemed but a child; for all she had been married six years she had but just passed out of her “teens” and might easily have been taken for a girl of fifteen.  Her hair, it is true, was “tucked up,” but the innocence in the upturned, velvet eyes, the soft, childish outlines of the face, the dimpled hands and arms against the harp’s glided strings, the simple little frock of white dimity, all combined to give her a “babyfied” look which was most appealing, and which her title of “Mrs. Poe” seemed rather to accentuate than otherwise.

Rufus Griswold’s furtive eye rested balefully upon her.  And this exquisite being too, belonged to that man—­as if the gods had not already given him enough!

From a far corner of the room her husband gazed upon her, and bathed his senses in contemplation of her beauty while his soul soared with her song.  Mother Clemm noiselessly passing near him to snuff a candle on the table upon which his elbow, propping his head, rested, paused for a moment and laid a caressing hand upon his hair.  He impulsively drew her down to a seat beside him.

“Oh, Muddie, Muddie, look at her—­look at her!” he whispered.  “There is no one anywhere so beautiful as my little wife!  And no voice like hers outside of Heaven!...  Ah—­”

What was the matter?  Was his Virginia ill?  Even as he spoke her voice broke upon the middle of a note—­then stopped.  One hand clutched the harp, the other flew to her throat from which came only an inarticulate sound like a struggle for utterance.  Terror was in the innocent eyes and the deathly white, baby face.

For a tense moment the little company of birthday guests sat rooted to their places with horror, then rushed in a mass toward the singer, but her husband was there first—­his face like marble.  His arms were around her but with a repetition of that inarticulate, gurgling sound she fell limp against his breast in a swoon.  From the sweet lips where so lately only melody had been a tiny stream of blood oozed and trickled down and stained her pretty white dress.