Everybody agreed that Mrs. Kennion's party for the young American singer was a delightful and memorable occasion. She gave them song after song, accompanying herself on the Erard grand piano, at which she always made such a pretty picture. It drifted into a request programme, and Tommy, whose memory was inexhaustible, seemed always to have the wished-for song at the tip of her tongue, were it English, Scotch, Irish, or Welsh. There was general laughter and surprise when Madame Eriksson, a Norwegian lady who was among the guests, asked her for a certain song of Halfdan Kjerulf's. "I only know it in its English translation," Tommy said, "and I haven't sung it for a year, but I think I remember it. Forgive me if I halt in the words: "'I hardly know, my darling, What mostly took my heart, Unless perhaps your singing Has done the greater part. I've thrilled to many voices, The passionate, the strong, But I forgot the singer, And I forgot the song. But there's one song, my darling, That I can ne'er forget. I listened and I trembled, And felt my cheek was wet; It seemed my heart within me Gave answer clear and low When first I heard you sing, dear, Then first I loved you so!'" Tommy had sung the song hundreds of times in earlier years, and she had not the slightest self-consciousness when she began it; but just as she reached the last four lines her eyes met Fergus Appleton's. He was seated in a far corner of the room, leaning eagerly forward, with one arm on the back of a chair in front of him. She was singing the words to the company, but if ever a man was uttering and confirming them it was Fergus Appleton at that moment. The blindest woman could see, the deafest could hear, the avowal. Tommy caught her breath quickly, looked away, braced her memory, and finished, to the keen delight of old Madame Eriksson, who rose and kissed her on both cheeks. Tommy was glad that her part of the evening was over, and to cover her confusion offered to sing something of her own composing, the Mother Goose rhyme of "Little Tommy Tucker Sings for His Supper," arranged as an operatic recitative and aria. The humor of this performance penetrated even to the remotest fastnesses of the staid cathedral circle, and the palace party ended in something that positively resembled merriment, a consummation not always to be reached in gatherings exclusively clerical in character. The bishop's coachman always drove Miss Tucker home, and Appleton always walked to his lodgings, which were in the opposite direction, so nothing could be done that night, but he determined that another sun should not go down before he put his fate to the touch.