"I also will enjoy a change to something old and simple," said Laura, and her fingers glided into a selection which Haldane instantly recognized as Steibelt's Storm Rondo.
As Laura glanced at him she saw his deepening color, and then it suddenly flashed upon her when she had first played that music for him, and her own face flushed with annoyance at her forgetfulness. After playing it partly through she turned to her music-stand in search of something else, but Haldane said: "Please finish the rondo, Miss Romeyn;" adding, with a frank laugh, "You have, no doubt, forgotten it; but you once, by means of this music, gave me one of the most deserved and wholesome lessons I ever received."
"Your generous acknowledgment of a fancied mistake at that time should have kept me from blunders this evening," she replied in a pained tone.
With a steady glance that held her eyes he said very quietly, and almost gently: "You have made no blunder, Miss Romeyn. I do not ignore the past, nor do I wish it to be ignored with painstaking care. I am simply trying to face it and overcome it as I might an enemy. I may be wrong, for you know I have had little chance to become versed in the ways of good society; but it appears to me that it would be better even for those who are to spend but a social hour together that they should be free from the constraint which must exist when there is a constant effort to shun delicate or dangerous ground. Please finish the rondo; and also please remember that the ice is not thin here and there," he added with a smile.
Laura caught her aunt's glance, and the significant lighting up of her face, and, with an answering smile, she said: "If you will permit me to change the figure, I will suggest that you have broken the ice so completely that I shall take you at your word, and play and sing just what you wish;" and, bent upon giving the young man all the pleasure she could, she exerted her powers to the utmost in widely varied selections; and while she saw that his technical knowledge was limited, it was clearly evident that he possessed a nature singularly responsive to musical thoughts and effects; indeed, she found a peculiar pleasure and incentive in glancing at his face from time to time, for she saw reflected there the varied characteristics of the melody. But once, as she looked up to see how he liked an old English ballad, she caught that which instantly brought the hot blood into her face.