But it was not so. She was singing indeed, but her voice was so low that it scarcely ever rose above the murmuring tone of the accompanying water; and she had chosen fit words to express the caprice of a sick heart. It was the brave Grizzel Baillie’s pathetic ballad, “Werena my heart licht, I wad dee”--most sad of all the utterances of endurance. Lilias had never known before that sick and flickering lightness of the strained heart. Her hands fell listlessly upon her lap; her head drooped forward--so pale it was and troubled--into the golden air; her mind was away, wandering painfully through all the bitter hypotheses of care and anxious sorrow, and the slow notes stole murmuring over her lip, the unconscious plaint of her weariness. Who has not felt that contradiction? who does not know the strength and life of pain, and how it buoys up the feeble almost as hope does?--“Werena my heart licht, I wad dee.” As she sat thus, Halbert entered the grounds of Mossgray, and perceiving Lilias, advanced to her with some hesitation. He seemed to be doubtful whether he should speak to her or no, and gave a wavering glance up to the turret-window of Mossgray’s study as he passed. But Mossgray was seated in the dusk of the large apartment, with content upon his face--content for both the children of his old age, and good hope that the cloud of Lilias’ firmament was floating away. The young man went on with a slow, reluctant step to the sun-dial: she had not noticed him, and unseen he listened to the pathetic burden of her song. “Werena my heart licht, I wad dee.” Halbert had never heard the words before, and they struck him strangely. Lilias started as she heard his step; she had fallen into strange habits of late--customs not common to the calm and thoughtful composure of her nature. Such fancies as the poet’s Margaret had, as she sat by her solitary door, while her eyes “Were busy in the distance, shaping things That made her heart beat quick.” It startled her very much, this sudden footstep. She turned her head with a sharp, quick flush of pain, and then it drooped again so languidly. “Is it you, Halbert?” “Lilias,” said Halbert, with a difficult attempt at cheerfulness, “it is very rare to hear you sing, and that strange song. Where does it come from?” “Do you think it strange?” said Lilias. “I think it is not strange, but only very sad and true. Grizzel Baillie must have had a sick heart sometimes, and it sang to her so.” But the stalwart, healthful Halbert had never been sick at heart. “I do not understand it very well,” he said, frankly; “but where did you get it, Lilias?” “My mother had a maid called Barbara,” said Lilias, with her faint smile, “and, like Desdemona’s, she carried this old, plaintive music about with her. She did not die singing it; but I think, in her homely fashion, she knew its meaning well. I had it from her. But, Halbert, you are not well--something has troubled you!”