He sang song after song--for they pressed for it--accompanying himself. One song that he was especially asked for, he could not remember without the music. Mrs. Wilberforce suggested that he should fetch it from home, but Georgina said she could play it for him, and sat down. It was that fine song called "The Treasures of the Deep," by Mrs. Hemans. It was found, however, that she could not play it; and after two or three attempts, she began a waltz instead; and the ladies, in the distance round the fire, forgot at length that they had wanted it. Georgina wore an evening dress of white spotted muslin, a broad blue sash round her waist, and a bit of narrow blue velvet suspending a cross on her neck. She had taken off her bracelets to play, and her pretty white arms were bare. Her eyes were blue as the ribbon, and altogether she looked very attractive, very _young_, and she was that night in one of her wild and inexplicable humours. What she really said, how he responded, will never be wholly known: certain it is, that she led him on, on, until he resigned himself wholly to the fascination and "told his love;" although he might have known that to do so was little less than madness. She affected to ridicule him; she intimated that her love was not for a college boy; but all the while her looks gave the lie to her words; her blue eyes spoke of admiration still; her flushed face of triumphant, gratified vanity. _They_ were engaged round the fire, round the tables, anywhere; and Georgina had it all to herself, and played bars of music now and then, as if she were essaying different pieces. "Let us put aside this nonsense," she suddenly said. "It _is_ nonsense, and you know it, Harry. Here's a song," snatching the first that came to hand--"sing this; I'll play it for you." "Do you think I can _sing_?--now? with your cold words blighting me. Oh, tell me the worst!" he added, his tone one of strange pain. "Tell me----" "Goodness, Henry Arkell. If you look and talk in that serious manner, I shall think you have become crazy. Come; begin." "I seem to be in a sort of dream," he murmured, putting his hands to his temples. "Surely all the past, all our pleasant intercourse, is not to be forgotten! You will not throw me away like this?" "Where's the use of my playing this symphony, if you don't begin?" "Georgina!--let me call you so for the first, perhaps for the last time--dear Georgina, you cannot forget the past! You cannot mean what you have just said." "How unpleasant you are making things to-night!" she said, with a laugh. "I shall begin to think you have followed the example of those wretched little juniors, and taken plentifully of wine." "Perhaps I have; perhaps it is owing to that that I have courage freely to talk to you now. Georgina, you _know_ how I have loved you; you know that for years and years my life has been as one long blissful dream, filled with the image of you."