"All she needs is wings!" exclaimed Miss Ogilvy, and added to herself, "may she soon get them!"
Lady Mary, acknowledging the rapturous greeting with a seraphic expression and the grand air, literally floated to the harp, where nothing could have displayed to a greater advantage her long willowy figure, her long white thin arms, the drooping gold of her ringlets. As the golden music tinkled from the tips of her taper fingers--formed for the harp, which may have had somewhat to do with her choice of instrument--her ethereal loveliness swayed in unison, and, one might fancy--if not a rival--emitted a music of its own.
"She doesn't look a day over twenty!" exclaimed Miss Ogilvy. "Who would dream that she was thirty? But those fragile creatures break all at once. When she does fade she will be even more passée than most."
"But women know so many arts nowadays," said Anne drily. "And she would be the last to ignore them."
"Ah! no doubt she will hang on till she gets a husband. I never knew anyone to want one so badly."
"Lady Mary?" asked Hunsdon wonderingly. "I had long since grown to look upon her as a confirmed old maid."
"La! La! my lord!" Miss Ogilvy suddenly resolved upon a bold stroke. "She's trying with all her might and main to marry your own most intimate friend."
"My most intimate friend? He is in England. Nottingdale. Do you know him? Or do you perchance mean Warner?"
"Never heard of the first and it certainly is not the last. Oh, my lord!" And then she laughed so archly that poor Lord Hunsdon could not fail to read her meaning. His fresh coloured face, warm with ascending heat, turned a deep brick red. He felt offended with both Miss Ogilvy and Lady Mary, and edged closer to Anne as if for protection.
This conversation took place while Lady Mary was bowing in response to the plaudits her performance evoked. She tinkled out another selection, and then, with a gently dissenting gesture, the dreaming eyes almost somnambulistic, floated through the curtains.
There was a brief interval for rapturous vocatives and then the curtains were flung apart and Spring burst through, crying, "I come! I come! Ye have called me long. I come o'er the mountains with light and song! Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth By the winds that tell of the violet's birth."
The young lady, attired in white and hung with garlands, looked not unlike the engraving of "Spring" in the illustrated editions of the poems of the gentle Felicia. For a moment Anne, who had long outgrown Mrs. Hemans, was disposed to laugh, but as the sweet ecstatic voice trilled on a wave of sadness swept over her, a familiar scene of her childhood rose and effaced the one beneath. She saw the favourite room of her mother in the tower overhanging the sea, her brothers sprawled on the hearthrug, herself in her own little chair, her mother in her deep invalid sofa holding her youngest child in her arms, while she softly recited the "Evening Prayer at a Girl's School," "The Coronation of Inez del Castro," "Juana," or, to please the more robust taste of the boys, "Bernardo del Carpio," and "Casabianca," the last two in sweet inadequate tones. Lines, long forgotten swept back to Anne out of the past: The night wind shook the tapestry round an ancient palace room, And torches, as it rose and fell, waved through the gorgeous gloom.