“Le jour de Gloire est arrivé.” Marseillaise.
 I
T is much later than Claude’s usual hour for rising when he opens his eyes upon the morning following his midnight interview with Miss Giles. And he remains in a sort of half-dormant condition, listening to the sound of a rich contralto voice singing a martial air, to the accompaniment of a piano, at the other end of the house.
 
The young man dreamily endeavours to make out the words of the song, but cannot. Though when it draws to a conclusion he is surprised to hear, as he fancies, in the chorus or refrain a poetical reference to the Christian name of the young lady who has 278 honoured him with an appointment at the stables for that morning. Claude, thus curiously reminded of his engagement, is not long in making his toilet and finding his way to the trysting-place; but discovering that Glory has not yet put in an appearance there, he returns to the house, and looks in at the drawing-room door to discover who the fair singer may be.
 
There he finds Miss Mundella seated at the piano. She looks up as she hears the intruder’s footsteps, and, seeing Claude, smiles ingenuously upon him, holding out to him a perfectly modelled hand, and apologising for her absence the previous day.
 
Lileth is really glad to see Angland, and, odd as it may appear, admires him considerably, although she intends to wipe him out of her way at the earliest opportunity. She feels quite sorry now, as she looks up at him, not for his own sake,—far from it,—but because she thinks what a much more agreeable cavalier he would make than the flap-eared Mr. Cummercropper, who at present fetches and carries for her. And after the manner of the soldiers of opposing armies, who fraternise together during a temporary armistice ere they again fly at one another’s throats, so Lileth is just as glad to enjoy a conversation with her intended victim, as she would be with any other young man who came up to her standard of excellent parts, and these youths were very scarce visitors at Murdaro.
 
“I hope I have not disturbed you with my playing,” Miss Mundella remarks, noticing as she does so the hesitation with which Angland takes her hand. “I generally practice a little of a morning before breakfast. Are you fond of music?”
 
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“Very fond,” answers Claude, gazing with a mixed feeling of admiration and dislike at the proud, calm features of the fair object of his suspicions, as she bends over the music lying on the chair beside her.
 
“Is it possible such a girl can be a heartless criminal, or at least an abettor?” he asks himself, “or are appearances against her only?”
 
Then, to break the rather awkward silence, Claude speaks about the song he had heard when he awoke, and requests her to oblige him by singing it once more. Without any foolish affectation of hesitation she immediately complies.
 
“It is an almost forgotten piece of music nowadays, at least amongst English people,” Lileth says. “I am rather fond of it, probably because it suits my voice.” Then with perfect skill, her splendid face grandly eloquent with the military spirit engendered by the air and words, Miss Mundella sings the grand “Chanson de Roland” of the great Napoleon’s time:—
 
“Soldats fran?ais, chantez Roland,
L’honneur de la chevalerie,
Et répètez en combattant
Ces mots sacrés,
Ces mots sacrés:
Gloire et Patrie!
Gloire et Patrie!”
“Rather an elastic kind of patriotism was that of Rouget de Lisle,” observes Miss Mundella laughingly as she finishes, her eyes sparkling and cheeks warm with the verve she has put into her song; “most of his chansons are charmingly spirited, and he is credited 280 with fifty I think; but there are some thoroughly imperialistic, others republican, and others again legitimist,—all got up for the occasion.”
 
“Yes,” answers Claude, as the inspiriting music, combined with the fascination of Miss Mundella’s presence, renders that young man gradually oblivious of his suspicions, “and he was rather fond of annexing other people’s musical ideas, if the German critics are to be believed. You know they say he got his grand Marseillaise hymn from a Deutscher named Holzmann, some time before he wrote his impromptu masterpiece chez Baron Dietrich.”
 
“I have never heard that sin laid to his charge before,” remarks Lileth, striking some sonorous chords upon the keys as she speaks. “Are you great on musical anecdotes? I dote on them.”
 
“Oh no. I know little or nothing upon the subject. I’m really afraid I couldn’t tell you even Mendelssohn’s surname, if you asked it, correctly. But I remember about Rouget because I saw the house when I was at Strasbourg, and more particularly because it was there I heard a very good story, that in my opinion eclipses anything in the way of French wit I’ve ever heard before or since.”
 
“Oh, will you repeat it to me?”
 
“Well, I’m rather a bad hand at a story,” responds Claude, “but I will try to give you a general idea of the joke, which was attributed either to Rouget de Lisle himself or to some relative of his. I daresay it has been put in the mouths of many other notables as well.
 
“There was a grand wedding taking place at the parish church, and the charming bride, all blushes281 and lace-veil, was tremblingly signing her name in the register, when, horror of horrors, she upset the contents of the ink bottle over her wedding robes! All the vestry was in a commotion directly, and the little bridesmaids were like to faint when they saw the horrible black stains destroying the spotless purity of the bridal vestments. What a bad omen! Worse than spilling the salt at the breakfast. Everybody was about to rush forward to commiserate with the unhappy bride.
 
“But De Lisle’s relative, or somebody else’s relative, as the case may be, stepped forward, and, smiling on the woeful faces, took all the sting out of the accident; he even turned the mishap into the cause of much merriment, with a singularly happy bon mot:—
 
“‘Mais c’est tout naturel,’ he said, ‘aussit?t que mademoiselle est arrivé au port, elle a jeté l’ancre.’”
 
When Claude ceases speaking, Lileth shows her appreciation of his anecdote with a low, musical laugh. Then, taking advantage of the opportunity afforded her, she proceeds to give Angland a good dose of the kind of music that she observes has effect upon him; hoping that in the intervals of playing, by a skilfully conducted conversation, to worm a little useful information from him as to his plans, as he warms to her fascinations and becomes confidentially inclined.
 
“Yes,” she says, as Angland finishes a gay description of the little concert given in his honour by the stockmen at the out-station the night before,—“yes, some of these men have naturally really splendid voices. Always in the open air, and wearing no heavy coats to confine their chests, it is not to be wondered at that they have good lungs, at any rate. Miners I282 know are proverbially good singers. I have heard several at different times. Your late uncle sang very well, I believe, for example. Have you heard, by-the-bye, anything of his boy Billy yet?”
 
“No,” replies Claude, “and I am very anxious to get on with my uncle’s——I mean, to find my uncle’s grave. But as Billy is not here, and I can’t very well get on without him, I suppose I can’t do better than wait here for a time, as Mr. Giles so kindly pressed me to do, and see if the boy turns up.”
 
An independent observer, noticing the looks of admiration with which Angland was regarding the young lady by the piano, would hardly have imagined that an immediate withdrawal from her company was what he chiefly desired.
 
“Oh, pray, Mr. Angland,” says Lileth, turning towards Claude, and concentrating upon him all the will-power that a rapid glance of her glorious eyes can convey, “do not desert us just yet. It is such a pleasure to have an agreeable, educated man to converse with again. Any one who has travelled, and who knows about something besides horses and cattle, is quite a rara avis up here, I can assure you. I shall miss you very much when you have to go,” adds Miss Mundella, with a sigh.
 
Claude bows his acknowledgments of the compliments paid him, and the young lady continues speaking in a low voice, looking demurely downwards, and playing pianissimo meanwhile that bewitching Cavatina love-spell of Donizetti’s:—
 
“Believe me, I somehow feel a very great deal of interest in your search. It is so brave, so honourable, of you to take all this trouble merely to visit the283 grave of your relative. I fancy few men would care to do that for an uncle nowadays.”
 
Now it is one of the strange things “that no fellar can understand” how most of the best men one meets in every-day life will hasten to repudiate any assertion crediting them with an honourable or unselfish motive for any action they may have performed. It is just as if such a reason for a deed was something to be really ashamed of.
 
It is an odd but undeniable fact that men often take considerable trouble to make themselves out to be worse than they really are. So Claude, following the general rule, immediately endeavours to prove that he is not so good-hearted—therefore, in a worldly sense, so foolish—an individual as Miss Mundella would imagine. In fact, he swallows the encomiastic bait held out to him by that young lady.
 
“I am really afraid,” he exclaims, “that I cannot claim that it is all affection, on my part, that brings me up this way to search for my uncle’s grave. I must confess that there are more mercenary considerations mixed up with my sublimer motives than you kindly would credit me with.” And here we have to record a serious mistake Lileth made. For, instead of keeping her quarry under the gentle thraldom of her music, and the attractive warmth of manner which was really more natural to her than her usual appearance of coldness, Miss Mundella began to excuse this “mercenary motive” of Claude’s to him in her ordinary conversational tones.
 
Instantly he awakes, as it were, from the sweet confidential mood into which he has drifted, for the peculiar notes (timbre) of Lileth’s voice have again284 called up the viaduct scene to his memory; and Miss Mundella can tell by the altered manner in which he speaks, as he rises with some feeble excuse for quitting her side, that she has somehow scared him for the nonce.
 
But she has gained one little piece of information: which is, that Claude is aware that something advantageous to himself awaits the successful accomplishment of his expedition. “It must be the P. Ns.” she thinks, as she leans backward on the sofa after he has left her.
 
And at breakfast Lileth makes another and rather disconcerting discovery,—namely, that Claude and Glory have some secret understanding betwee............