"It is quite indescribable, Miss Marlowe, how your music interests me--I should say, haunts me. I thought at first it was because you loved ballad music, which I also love; but it is not that--it is something higher and more peculiar." "I am sure you were right at first, for I _know_ I am a very indifferent musician," said Beatrix, looking down under her long lashes on the keys over which the jewelled fingers of her right hand wandered with hardly a tinkle, just tracing dreamily one of those sweet melancholy airs which made in fancy an accompaniment to the music of that young fellow's words. How beautiful she looked, too, with eyes lowered and parted lips, and that listening smile--not quite a smile--drinking in with a strange rapture of pride and softness the flatteries which she refused and yet invited. "It _is_ something higher and mysterious, which, perhaps, I shall never attempt to explain, unless, indeed, I should risk talking very wildly--too wildly for you to understand, or, if you did, perhaps--to forgive." "You mentioned a Breton ballad you once heard," said Beatrix, frightened, as girls will sometimes become whenever the hero of their happy hours begins on a sudden to define. "Yes," he said, and the danger of the crisis was over. "I wish so much I could remember the air, you would so enter into its character, and make its wild unfathomable melancholy so beautifully touching in your clear contralto." "You must not flatter me; I want to hear more of that ballad." "If flattery be to speak more highly than one thinks, who can flatter Miss Marlowe?" Again the crisis was menacing. "Besides, I did not tell you we are leaving, I believe, in a day or two, and on the eve of so near a departure, may I not improve the few happy moments that are left me, and be permitted the privilege of a leave-taking, to speak more frankly, and perhaps less wisely than one who is destined to be all his life a neighbour?" "Papa, I am sure, will be very sorry to hear that you and Monsieur Varbarriere are thinking of going so soon; I must try, however, to improve the time, and hear all you can tell me of those interesting people of Brittany." "Yes, they are. I will make them another visit--a sadder visit, Mademoiselle--for me a far more interesting one. You have taught me how to hear and see them. I never felt the spirit of Villemarque, or the romance and melancholy of that antique region, till I had the honour of knowing you." "My friends always laughed at me about Brittany. I suppose different people are interested by different subjects; but I do not think anyone could read at all about that part of the world and not be fascinated. You promised to tell all you remember of that Breton ballad." "Oh, yes; the haunted lady, the beautiful lady, the heiress of Carlowel, now such a grand ruin, became enamoured of a mysterious cavalier who wooed her; but he was something not of flesh and blood, but of the spirit world."