On this particular night it was all on view,
greatly to the satisfaction of Ida, who was a witty as well as a
clever woman. And so it came to pass that the dinner was a very
pleasant one.

Harold and the Squire were still sitting over their wine. The latter
was for the fifth time giving his guest a full and particular account
of how his deceased aunt, Mrs. Massey, had been persuaded by a learned
antiquarian to convert or rather to restore Dead Man's Mount into its
supposed primitive condition of an ancient British dwelling, and of
the extraordinary expression of her face when the bill came in, when
suddenly the servant announced that George was waiting to see him.

The old gentleman grumbled a great deal, but finally got up and went
to enjoy himself for the next hour or so in talking about things in
general with his retainer, leaving his guest to find his way to the
drawing-room.

When the Colonel reached the room, he found Ida seated at the piano,
singing. She heard him shut the door, looked round, nodded prettily,
and then went on with her singing. He came and sat down on a low chair
some two paces from her, placing himself in such a position that he
could see her face, which indeed he always found a wonderfully
pleasant object of contemplation. Ida was playing without music--the
only light in the room was that of a low lamp with a red fringe to it.
Therefore, he could not see very much, being with difficulty able to
trace the outlines of her features, but if the shadow thus robbed him,
it on the other hand lent her a beauty of its own, clothing her face
with an atmosphere of wonderful softness which it did not always
possess in the glare of day. The Colonel indeed (we must remember that
he was in love and that it was after dinner) became quite poetical
(internally of course) about it, and in his heart compared her first
to St. Cecilia at her organ, and then to the Angel of the Twilight. He
had never seen her look so lovely. At her worst she was a handsome and
noble-looking woman, but now the shadow from without, and though he
knew nothing of that, the shadow from her heart within also, aided
maybe by the music's swell, had softened and purified her face till it
did indeed look almost like an angel's. It is strong, powerful faces
that are capable of the most tenderness, not the soft and pretty ones,
and even in a plain person, when such a face is in this way seen, it
gathers a peculiar beauty of its own. But Ida w