If he had heard the organ
indeed!--but he knew no instrument save the violin: the piano he had
only heard through the window. For a few moments her face brooded
over the bush, and her long, finely-modelled fingers travelled about
it as if they were creating a flower upon it--probably they were
assisting the birth or blowing of some beauty--and then she raised
herself with a lingering look, and vanished from the field of the
window.
But ever after this, when the evening grew dark, Robert would steal
out of the house, leaving his book open by his grannie's lamp, that
its patient expansion might seem to say, 'He will come back
presently,' and dart round the corner with quick quiet step, to hear
if Miss St. John was playing. If she was not, he would return to
the Sabbath stillness of the parlour, where his grandmother sat
meditating or reading, and Shargar sat brooding over the freedom of
the old days ere Mrs. Falconer had begun to reclaim him. There he
would seat himself once more at his book--to rise again ere another
hour had gone by, and hearken yet again at her window whether the
stream might not be flowing now. If he found her at her instrument
he would stand listening in earnest delight, until the fear of being
missed drove him in: this secret too might be discovered, and this
enchantress too sent, by the decree of his grandmother, into the
limbo of vanities. Thus strangely did his evening life oscillate
between the two peaceful negations of grannie's parlour and the
vital gladness of the unknown lady's window.
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