e guests, asked her
for a certain song of Halfdan Kjerulf's.

"I only know it in its English translation," Tommy said, "and I
haven't sung it for a year, but I think I remember it. Forgive me if I
halt in the words:

"'I hardly know, my darling,
What mostly took my heart,
Unless perhaps your singing
Has done the greater part.
I've thrilled to many voices,
The passionate, the strong,
But I forgot the singer,
And I forgot the song.
But there's one song, my darling,
That I can ne'er forget.
I listened and I trembled,
And felt my cheek was wet;
It seemed my heart within me
Gave answer clear and low
When first I heard you sing, dear,
Then first I loved you so!'"

Tommy had sung the song hundreds of times in earlier years, and she
had not the slightest self-consciousness when she began it; but just
as she reached the last four lines her eyes met Fergus Appleton's. He
was seated in a far corner of the room, leaning eagerly forward, with
one arm on the back of a chair in front of him. She was singing the
words to the company, but if ever a man was uttering and confirming
them it was Fergus Appleton at that moment. The blindest woman could
see, the deafest could hear, the avowal.

Tommy caught her breath quickly, looked away, braced her memory, and
finished, to the keen delight of old Madame Eriksson, who rose and
kissed her on both cheeks.

Tommy was glad that her part of the evening was over, and to cover her
confusion offered to sing something of her own composing, the Mother
Goose rhyme of "Little Tommy Tucker Sings for His Supper," arranged as
an operatic recitative and aria. The humor of this performance
penetrated even to the remotest fastnesses of the staid cathedral
circle, and the palace party ended in something that positively
resembled merriment, a consummation not always to be reached in
gatherings exclusively clerical in character.

The bishop's coachman always drove Miss Tucker home, and Appleton
always walked to his lodgings, which were in the opposite direction,
so nothing could be done that night, but he determined that another
sun should not go down before he put his fate to the touch.

How could h