Somehow or another, during that dinner, Sir Philip's words would keep repeating themselves to Charley, and at last he found himself muttering: "Shut myself out from an Eden--from an Eden!" while, when the ladies rose, and the door had closed upon the last rustling silk, a cloud appeared to have come over the scene, and he sat listening impatiently to the drawl of Max, and the agricultural converse of Mr Bray. It was with alacrity, then, that Charley left the table, when, upon reaching the drawing-room, he found Laura hovering in a paradise of musical R's, as she sat at the piano, rolling them out in an Italian bravura song, whose pages, for fear that he should be forestalled by Charley Vining, Hugh Lingon rushed to turn over. "Now Miss Bedford will sing us something," shrieked Mrs Bray; and not daring to decline, Ella rose and walked to the piano, taking up a song from the canterbury. But her hands trembled as a shadow seemed to be cast upon her; and without daring to look, she knew that Charley Vining was at her side, ready to turn over the leaves. "If he would only go!" she thought; and then she commenced with tremulous voice a sweet and plaintive ballad, breathing of home and the past, when, living as it were in the sweet strain, her voice increased in volume and pathos, the almost wild expression thrilling through her hearers, till towards the end of the last verse, when forgetting even Vining's presence in the recollections evoked, Ella was brought back to the present with a start, as one single hot tear-drop fell upon her outstretched hand. How she finished that song she never knew, nor yet how she concealed her painful agitation; but her next recollection was of being in the conservatory with Charley Vining, alone, and with his deep-toned voice seeming to breathe only for her ear. "You must think it weak and childish," he said softly; "but I could not help it," he added simply. "Perhaps I am, after all, only an overgrown boy; but that was my dear mother's favourite song--one which I have often listened to; and as you sung to-night, the old past seemed to come back almost painfully. But I need not fear that you will ridicule me." "Indeed, no!" said Ella softly. "I can only regret that I gave you pain." "Pain! No, it was not pain," said Charley musingly. "I cannot explain the feeling. I am a great believer in the power of music; and had we been alone, I might have asked you to repeat the strain. I am only too glad, though, that my poor father was not here." There was a pause for quite a minute--one which, finding how her companion had been moved, Ella almost feared to break; when seeing him start back, as it were, into the present and its duties, she made a movement as if to return. "But one minute, Miss Bedford," said Charley. "You admire flowers, I see. Look at the metallic, silvery appearance of these leaves." "Pray excuse me, Mr Vining," said Ella quietly, "but I wish to return to the drawing-room."