"
The two ladies had the small drawing-room to themselves in the evening as
a rule, but to-night, the fancy took Sir Francis to join them there.
Deleah, nervous at playing and singing before him, was too shy to ask to
be excused. She had been told that the dead wife had been a fine
instrumental performer, and that every evening she had provided for her
husband a genuine musical treat.
"I'm afraid I don't play any good music," she said. But Sir Francis, truth
to tell, shared his sister's lamentable taste, and if, as he sat silent
and pensive, beneath the shaded lamp on the round centre table, while the
girl at the piano went through her simple repertoire, his heart was
filled with memories of his lost wife, he certainly was not lamenting the
works of Mozart and Beethoven which she had so skilfully rendered.
Deleah, however, did not know this, never doubting that her benefactor was
a connoisseur of all the arts. Her fingers trembled upon wrong notes--all
undetected, had she known--her sweet voice faltered through the songs she
was wont to sing so pleasingly. She went off to bed, not daring to look
the master of the house in the face, so shocked and jarred and weary she
felt that he must be.
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