It seemed to proceed
from a flute, played upon by a human voice. The air was melancholy, but
the skill was divine.
The native curiosity of Miss Fletcher was not upon this occasion a match
for the sympathetic spirit of Delia. She pressed forward with an eager and
uncertain step, and looking through an interstice formed by two venerable
oaks, she perceived the figure of a young man sitting in her favourite
alcove. His back was turned towards the side upon which she was. Having
finished the air, he threw his flute carelesly from him, and folded his
arms in a posture the most disconsolate that can be imagined. He rose and
advanced a little with an irregular step. "Ah lovely mistress of my soul,"
cried he, "thou little regardest the anguish that must for ever be an
inmate of this breast! While I am a prey to a thousand tormenting
imaginations, thou riotest in the empire of beauty, heedless of the wounds
thou inflicted, and the slaves thou chainest to thy chariot. Wretch that I
am, what is to be done? But I must think no more." Saying this he snatched
up his flute, and thrusting it into his bosom, hurried out of the grove.
While he spoke, Delia imagined that the voice was one that she had heard
before though she knew not where. Her heart whispered her something more
than her understanding could disentangle. But as he stooped to take his
flute from the ground his profile was necessarily turned towards the inner
part of the grove.
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