“I don’t pretend to know a man’s mind as well as you—neither De Malfort’s nor my husband’s. You have needed but the experience of a year to make you wise enough in the world’s ways to instruct your elders. I am not going to be preached to——Hark!” she cried, running to the nearest window, and looking out at the river, “that is better than your sermons.” It was the sound of fiddles playing the symphony of a song she knew well—one of De Malfort’s, a French chanson, her latest favourite, the words adapted from a little poem by Voiture, “Pour vos beaux yeux.” She opened the casement, and Angela stood beside her looking down at a boat in which several muffled figures were seated, and which was moored to the terrace wall. There were three violins and a ‘cello, and a quartette of singing-boys with fair young faces smiling in the light of the lamps that hung in front of Fareham’s house. The evening was still, and mild as early autumn, and the plash of oars passing up and down the river sounded like a part of the music— “Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair, Love does on both her lips for ever stray, And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there; In all her outward parts love’s always seen; But, oh, he never went within.” It was a song of Cowley’s, which De Malfort had lately set to music, and to a melody which Hyacinth especially admired. “A serenade! Only De Malfort could have thought of such a thing. Lying ill and alone, he sends me the sweetest token of his regard—my favourite air, his own setting—the last song I ever heard him sing. And you wonder that I value so pure, so disinterested a love!” protested Hyacinth to her sister, in the silence at the end of the song. “Sing again, sweet boys, sing again!” she cried, snatching a purse from her pocket, and flinging it with impetuous aim into the boat. It hit one of the fiddlers on the head, and there was a laugh, and in a trice the largesse was divided and pocketed. “They are from his Majesty’s choir; I know their voices,” said Hyacinth, “so fresh, and pure. They are the prettiest singers in the chapel. That little monkey with the cherub’s voice is Purcell—Dr. Blow’s favourite pupil—and a rare genius.” They sang another song from De Malfort’s repertoire, an Italian serenade, which Hyacinth had heard in the brilliant days before her marriage, when the Italian Opera was still a new thing in Paris. The melody brought back the memory of her happy girlhood with a rush of sudden tears.