The charm was now more human, though scarcely less powerful.  This was a different song from the last:  it was not the sculptured music of the old school, but had the richness and fulness of passionate blood that marks the modern Italian, where there is much dallying with beauty in the thick of sweet anguish.  Here, at a certain passage of the song, she gathered herself up and pitched a nervous note, so shrewdly triumphing, that, as her voice sank to rest, her hearers could not restrain a deep murmur of admiration.

Then came an awkward moment.  The ladies did not wish to go, and they were not justified in stopping.  They were anxious to speak, and they could not choose the word to utter.  Mr. Pericles relieved them by moving forward and doffing his hat, at the same time begging excuse for the rudeness they were guilty of.

The fair singer answered, with the quickness that showed a girl:  “Oh, stay; do stay, if I please you!” A singular form of speech, it was thought by the ladies.

She added:  “I feel that I sing better when I have people to listen to me.”

“You find it more sympathetic, do you not?” remarked Cornelia.

“I don’t know,” responded the unknown, with a very honest smile.  “I like it.”

She was evidently uneducated.  “A professional?” whispered Adela to Arabella.  She wanted little invitation to exhibit her skill, at all events, for, at a word, the clear, bold, but finely nervous voice, was pealing to a brisker measure, that would have been joyous but for one fall it had, coming unexpectedly, without harshness, and winding up the song in a ringing melancholy.

After a few bars had been sung, Mr. Pericles was seen tapping his forehead perplexedly.  The moment it ended, he cried out, in a tone of vexed apology for strange ignorance:  “But I know not it?  It is Italian—­yes, I swear it is Italian!  But—­who then?  It is superbe!  But I know not it!”

“It is mine,” said the young person.

“Your music, miss?”

“I mean, I composed it.”

“Permit me to say, Brava!”

The ladies instantly petitioned to have it sung to them again; and whether or not they thought more of it, or less, now that the authorship was known to them, they were louder in their applause, which seemed to make the little person very happy.

“You are sure it pleases you?” she exclaimed.

They were very sure it pleased them.  Somehow the ladies were growing gracious toward her, from having previously felt too humble, it may be.  She was girlish in her manner, and not imposing in her figure.  She would be a sweet mystery to talk about, they thought:  but she had ceased to be quite the same mystery to them.

“I would go on singing to you,” she said; “I could sing all night long:  but my people at the farm will not keep supper for me, when it’s late, and I shall have to go hungry to bed, if I wait.”

“Have you far to go?” ventured Adela.