as an earnest sadness.

Graham was touched and startled; but before he could answer, the
American Minister appealed to him across the table, asking if he had
quoted accurately a passage in a speech by Graham's distinguished
father, in regard to the share which England ought to take in the
political affairs of Europe.

The conversation now became general, very political and very serious.
Graham was drawn into it, and grew animated and eloquent.

Isaura listened to him with admiration. She was struck by what seemed to
her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated his theme above the level
of commonplace polemics. She was pleased to notice, in the attentive
silence of his intelligent listeners, that they shared the effect
produced on herself. In fact, Graham Vane was a born orator, and his
studies had been those of a political thinker. In common talk he was
but the accomplished man of the world, easy and frank and genial, with
a touch of good-natured sarcasm; but when the subject started drew
him upward to those heights in which politics become the science
of humanity, he seemed a changed being. His cheek glowed, his eye
brightened, his voice mellowed into richer tones, his language be
came unconsciously adorned. In such moments there might scarcely be
an audience, even differing from him in opinion, which would not have
acknowledged his spell.

When the party adjourned to the salon, Isaura said softly to Graham, "I
understand why you did not cultivate music; and I think, too, that I can
now understand what effects the human voice can produce on human minds
without recurring to the art of song."

"Ah," said Graham, with a pleased smile, "do not make me ashamed of my
former rudeness by the revenge of compliment; and, above all, do not
disparage your own art by supposing that any prose effect of voice in
its utterance of mind can interpret that which music alone can express,
even to listeners so uncultured as myself. Am I not told truly by
musical composers, when I ask them to explain in words what they say
in their music, that such explanation is impossible, that music has a
language of its own untranslatable by words?"

"Yes," said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but brightening eyes, "you are
told truly. It was only the other day that I was pondering over that
truth."

"But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, this untranslatable
language penetrates and brightens up! How incomplete the grand nature of
man--though