The
song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home.
What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive
melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they
have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces
of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the
peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose
before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the
Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.
The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes,
and rose to leave the room.
"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were
about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that
were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see
again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the
happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh,
I pray God I may never hear that melody again."
There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave
Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of
the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature
who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant
farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds.
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