abruptly, and is truly noble, she sang it with the sudden pathos, the
weight, and the swelling majesty, of a truthful soul hymning truth with
all its powers.

All the hearers, even Sampson, were thrilled, astonished, spell-bound: so
can one wave of immortal music and immortal verse (alas! how seldom they
meet!) heave the inner man when genius interprets. Judge, then, what it
was to Alfred, to whom, with these great words and thrilling tones of her
rich, swelling, ringing voice, the darling of his own heart vowed
constancy, while her inspired face beamed on him like an angel's.

Even Mrs. Dodd, though acquainted with the song, and with her daughter's
rare powers, gazed at her now with some surprise, as well as admiration,
and kept a note Sarah had brought her, open, but unread, in her hand,
unable to take her eyes from the inspired songstress. However, just
before the song ended, she did just glance down, and saw it was signed
Richard Hardie. On this her eye devoured it; and in one moment she saw
that the writer declined, politely but peremptorily, the proposed
alliance between his son and her daughter.

The mother looked up from this paper at that living radiance and
incarnate melody in a sort of stupor: it seemed hardly possible to her
that a provincial banker could refuse an alliance with a creature so
peerless as that. But so it was; and despite her habitual
self-government, Mrs. Dodd's white hand clenched the note till her nails
dented it; and she reddened to the brow with anger and mortification.

Julia, whom she had trained never to monopolise attention in society, now
left the piano in spite of remonstrance, and soon noticed her mother's
face; for from red it had become paler than usual. "Are you unwell,