When Margarita spoke, even with energy, as she often did, there was always something sweet and innocent about her, with a certain quiet dignity, and a touch of softness in her expression, which, when taken with the bright and lofty character of her beauty, rendered her wonderfully attractive. She soon discovered that he was musical, and they sang frequently together, while she played the accompaniment; and when he gave forth the notes of the Master of Ravenswood's farewell to his lost love, and gave it with a power and pathos that, though she had heard many of the best tenors at Vienna sing the same air, yet none had seemed to do so with such tenderness and heart-broken despair--and when their eyes met, her heart began to thrill beneath the ardour of his gaze, for Cecil, when he sung thus, gave his whole soul to it, and thought of Mary--Mary Montgomerie only, or it might be the memory of the mother that taught him; but to the ear of Margarita every note seemed, as she once said, 'to be a lover's wail over a lost love.' On one of these occasions, Cecil saw some pieces of dance music lying about, inscribed with the name of Captain Mattei Guebhard. 'The captain--he is a friend of yours?' he remarked. 'He was here on a visit to Michail once--yes,' she replied, with a shrug of her shoulders, and dismissed the subject. 'I grew weary of him; he was jealous as Jelitza!' But Cecil observed next day, that all those particular pieces of music had disappeared. Always fond of female society, Cecil found the daily association with this accomplished girl a source of the purest pleasure, and he strove, but in vain, to find traces and resemblances in her to Mary Montgomerie; for Margarita was larger, darker, more brilliant and colossal in her beauty, if we may use such a term. She had quite a repertory of Servian legends, to which she recurred from time to time, and told with a piquancy which her foreign accent and foreign graces of manner enhanced; and one day she took him to a little lake--a dark and stagnant tarn, overshadowed by great trees, and near the Morava, which she affirmed to mark the grave of the jealous Jelitza, so famed in Servian song. Remembering her reference to this personage when she spoke of Guebhard, he asked who she was.