singing plaintively. He knew it was the voice of Isaura-_he passed on,
leaving the house behind him, and tracking the voice till he reached the
singer.

Isaura was seated within an arbour towards the farther end of the
garden,--an arbour which, a little later in the year, must indeed be
delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine and woodbine; now
into its iron trelliswork leaflets and flowers were insinuating their
gentle way. Just at the entrance one white rose--a winter rose that had
mysteriously survived its relations--opened its pale hues frankly to the
noonday sun. Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, and the last note of
the song had ceased when he stood at the entrance of the arbour. Isaura
did not perceive him at first, for her face was bent downward musingly,
as was often her wont after singing, especially when alone; but she felt
that the place was darkened, that something stood between her and the
sunshine. She raised her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as she
uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, but inwardly and
whisperingly, as in a sort of fear.

"Pardon me, Mademoiselle," said Graham, entering; "but I heard your voice
as I came into the garden, and it drew me onward involuntarily. What a
lovely air! and what simple sweetness in such of the words as reached me!
I am so ignorant of music that you must not laugh at me if I ask whose is
the music and whose are the words? Probably both are so well known as to
convict me of a barbarous ignorance."

"Oh, no," said Isaura, with a still heightened colour, and in accents
embarrassed and hesitating. "Both the words and music are by an unknown
and very humble composer, yet not, indeed, quite original,--they have not
even that merit; at least they were suggested by a popular song in the