"She plays," said Bertie, "as if she were desperately in love."

"With Mr. Vavasour?" laughed Cecil.

"With no one, I dare say. It indicates, however, a _besoin d'aimer_."

Cecil took up "The Wanderer" again, but she soon found they were not _en
rapport_. The captain's temperament was now, ear and fancy, under the
spell of the fair musician.

Bertie was soon by the piano, but Bluebell ceased almost directly after.
He had brought from Montreal [unreadable] Minstrel Melodies, then just
out, and asked her to try one. She excused herself on the plea that it
was a man's song, so he began it himself. Who has not suffered from the
male amateur, who comes forward with bashful fatuity to favour the
company with a strain tame and inaudible as a nervous school girl's?
Bertie was no musician, and his songs were all picked up by ear, but
there was a passion and _timbre_ in the tenor voice, fascinating if
unskilful, and the refrain of "Gentle Annie,"

"Shall we never more behold her,
Never hear that winning voice again,
Till the spring time comes, gentle Annie,
Till the wild flowers are scattered o'er the plain?"

lingered with its mournful, tender inflection in more than one ear
that night.

Afterwards the two young men from the barracks, muffled to the chin in