looks pretty while singing."

"Ah, that is very nice!" said Thelma, with a demure smile. "Then I am
agreeable to you when I sing?"

Agreeable? This was far too tame a word--they all rose from the table
and came towards her, with many assurances of their delight and
admiration; but she put all their compliments aside with a little
gesture that was both incredulous and peremptory.

"You must not say so many things in praise of me," she said, with a
swift upward glance at Errington, where he leaned on the piano regarding
her. "It is nothing to be able to sing. It is only like the birds, but
we cannot understand the words they say, just as you cannot understand
Norwegian. Listen,--here is a little ballad you will all know," and she
played a soft prelude, while her voice, subdued to a plaintive murmur,
rippled out in the dainty verses of Sainte-Beuve--

"Sur ma lyre, l'autre fois
Dans un bois,
Ma main preludait a peine;
Une colombe descend
En passant,
Blanche sur le luth d'ebene"

"Mais au lieu d'accords touchants,
De doux chants,
La colombe gemissante
Me demande par pitie
Sa moitie
Sa moitie loin d'elle absente!"

She sang this seriously and sweetly till she came to the last three
lines, when, catching Errington's earnest gaze, her voice quivered and
her cheeks flushed. She rose from the piano as soon as she had finished,
and said to the _bonde_, who had been watching her with proud and
gratified looks--

"It is growing late, father. We must say good-bye to our friends and
return home."

"Not yet!" eagerly implored Sir Philip. "Come up on deck,--we will have
coffee there, and afterwards you shall leave us when you will."

Gueldmar acquiesced in this arrangement, before his daughter had time to
raise any objection, and they all went on deck, where a comfortable
lounging chair was placed for Thelma, facing the most gorgeous portion
of the glowing sky, which on this evening was like a moving mass of
molten gold, split asunder here and there by angry ragged-looking rifts
of crimson. The young men grouped themselves together at the prow of the
vessel in order to smoke their cigars without annoyance to Thelma. Old
Gueldmar did not smoke, but he talked,--and Errington after seeing them
all fairly absorbed in an argument on the best methods of spearing
salmon, moved quietly away to where the girl was sitting, her great
pensive eyes fixed on