She opened the organ, and although partly beyond the range of Mr. Palma’s vision, he heard every syllable of the sweet mellow English words of Kuecken’s “Schlummerlied,” with its soothing refrain: 

“Oh, hush thee now, in slumber mild,
While watch I keep, oh sleep, my child.”

She sang it with strange pathos, thinking of her own far distant mother, whom fate had denied the privilege of chanting lullabies over her lonely blue-eyed child.

Ending, she came back to the hearth, and Llora clasped her tiny hands, and chirped: 

“Oh, so sweet!  When you get to heaven, don’t you reckon you will sit in the choir?  Once more, oh! do, please.”

“What a hungry little beggar you are!  Come, sit in my lap, and I will hum you a dear little tune.  Then you must positively scamper away to bed, or your mamma will scold us both, and your mammie also.”

A tall yellow woman with a white handkerchief wound turban-style around her head, came stealthily forward, and said: 

“Miss, give her to me.  I went downstairs for a drink of water, and when I got back I missed her.  Come, baby, let me carry you to bed or you will have the croup, and the doctors might cut your throat.”

“Wait, mammie, till she sings that little tune she promised; then I will go.”

Regina sat down in a low cushioned chair, took the little girl on her lap, and while the curly head nestled on her shoulder, and one arm clasped her neck, she rested her chin upon the brown hair, and sang in a very sweet, subdued tone that most soothing of all lullaby strains, Wallace’s “Cradle Song.”

As she proceeded, the turbaned head of the nurse kept time, swaying to and fro in the background, and a sweeter picture never adorned canvas than that which Mr. Palma watched in front of his library fire, and which photographed itself indelibly upon his memory.

Singer and child occupied very much the same position as the figures in the Madonna della Sedia, and no more lovely woman and child ever sat for its painter.

As Mr. Palma’s fastidiously critical eyes rested on the sad perfect face of Regina, with the long black lashes veiling her eyes, and the bare arms and shoulders gleaming above the silver gauze of her drapery, he silently admitted that her beauty seemed strangely sanctified, and more spirituelle than ever before.  Contrasting that sweet white figure, over whose delicate lips floated the dreamy rhythm of the cradle chant, with the hundreds of handsome, accomplished, witty, and brilliant women who thronged the ball-room he had just left, this man of the world confessed that his proud ambitious heart was hopelessly in bondage to the fair young singer.

“Sleep, my little one, sleep,—­
Sleep, my pretty one,—­sleep.”

At that moment he was powerfully tempted to delay no longer to take her to his bosom for ever; and it cost him a struggle to sit patiently, while every fibre of his strong frame was thrilling with a depth and fervour of feeling that threatened to bear away all dictates of discretion.  Ah! what a divine melody seemed to ring through all his future as he leaned eagerly forward, and listened to the closing words, softly reiterated: