’If Miss Graham,’ he said, with a low bow, ’will honour me with a song, she will make a poor poet the richer. I find no inspiration in the world like the lilt of a bonny voice in a bonny tune.’ Alison smiled to herself as she went to put off her hood and pelisse and smooth her curls. The deep, flattering voice rang oddly in her ears, for they were full of the curt speech and clear, incisive utterance of her lover—who was certainly no poet. In her absence, the Bard leaned against the mantel-piece and glowered down with his dark look upon his hostess. She—flushed, radiant, passionate, fluttered like a bird in the big hand of the fowler, but a willing bird. ’Are all our interviews, madam,’ began the Bard rather moodily, ’to be held in the presence of a third person? Are Clarinda and Sylvander never to be alone?’ ’Nay, but our third person—such a sweet, interesting girl,’ said Nancy, persuasively. ’The companion of my dreary solitude—think of it! ’Twill not be always possible to dispense with her society,’ she added, pensively, ’nor—nor desirable, perhaps.’ A warm look shot from the poet’s eye. ’Has _she_ no kindred soul compelling her society when we wish mutually to enjoy each other’s?’ demanded he, harping on the unexpected intruder. ’Nay, never a one!’ said Nancy, laughing archly. ’And ’tis a girl I promised to find a swain for, too. Can Sylvander’s romantic ingenuity not help me here?’ ’Sylvander has the kettle on the other hob, I’m thinking!’ said the poet with a short, meaning laugh. His manner varied from the rather stilted politeness into which he had schooled it, sometimes to a racy reversion to his native ways of speech and gesture, sometimes, when an opening offered, to an uncontrollable and not always inoffensive familiarity. Sundry mistakes in such matters had cost him more than one friendship in the feminine great world—a cruel but perfectly inevitable injustice. Here, however, and with his present hostess, he was but too little likely to offend. Nancy was constitutionally lenient to the stronger sex in its warm moments. She had that curious insensitiveness to encroachment—that lack of resentment to the taking of small liberties—which may be sometimes seen in perfectly-refined and gently-nurtured women. It did not offend her now, for instance, that the poet—seen only for the second time in her life—should bend so closely over her, covering her with ardent, covetous eyes ... and then abruptly straighten himself as Alison came in. ’Come along, child,’ she cried, ’and sing! No, not with the harp—alone.’ She blew out two candles that were guttering low, so that the room was in firelight only. Alison sat down, and with her hands folded in her lap and her grave eyes fixed upon the fire, sang—sang, I think, as she had never sung before, because, at last, there had come to her a full understanding of the song. She chose one or two of the simpler and older ballads, love-songs of a peasant people long ago.