"This is unfortunate," he said to himself; "and I must resist such feelings--yet, why? I cannot answer why. She is very, very beautiful, graceful, gentle, bright, unsullied by this foul and dusty world in which we live. Why should I doubt or hesitate? Because my own sensations take me by surprise, and I feel myself led on by impulse rather than by reason. But what does boasted Reason do for us in such things as these? More frequently she misleads than directs us rightly. I will let things take their course. It is but my own happiness I peril; and, without perilling it, I cannot serve Emmeline as I could wish; nay, nor fully keep my promise. I will risk it. Perhaps these sensations will wear away. I remember when I thought myself desperately in love with the Spanish girl, the poor Cura's niece, at Valencia; and it ended in disgust; I do not think it will do so here. Then it was but sleepy black eyes, and a warm sunny cheek, and a neat bodice, and a pretty foot--with passion enough in all conscience, but neither soul nor mind. No, no! Emmeline is very different--yet it may wear off. If I have thought much of her--dreamed of her, I may say, by day and night since I have known her--it is very natural, without love having anything to do with it. Her strange fate, the wrong that has been done her, the greater wrong, I fear, intended her, the eager desire to free her from this thraldom, and to open her mind to her own history--and yet the difficulty of so doing--may all well have created an interest independent of love. Yet she is very beautiful and very charming. There is something winning in that smile, half tender, half playful; and certainly Nature in its happiest leisure never moulded a form of more exquisite symmetry. It makes one's heart beat almost to gaze upon her, surpassing far the highest effort of the sculptor's art, and full of living graces which neither sculptor's chisel nor painter's brush could ever catch or portray. Hark! she is singing! Ay, a well-remembered song of my young days. Her chamber must be near this, from the distinctness of the sounds." "Mellow year, mellow year, The winter time is near, With its frost, and its snow, and its wind; When the branches are all bare, And tempests load the air, And icy chains the dancing rivers bind." The song ceased, and the light accompaniment of a lute or mandolin ceased likewise. It seemed but a little outburst of that spirit of music which is in almost every young heart, and Smeaton said to himself--"I will sing her the next stanza. Perhaps she does not know it." And with a rich, mellow, tenor voice, he went on with the song, thus:-- "But the Spring, the bright Spring, On his green-embroider'd wing, Is speeding from the South all the while; Scattering flowers on Winter's way, And repairing all decay, And teaching tearful eyes again to smile."