to sing, there isn't an angel
in heaven that wouldn't quit the place and come to hear him! Crailey
wrote those words to Virginia Bareaud. (Her hair is even darker than
yours, you know.) That was when he was being engaged to her; and Tom
must have set the music to 'em lately, and now comes here to sing 'em
to you; and well enough they fit you! But you must keep him away,
Princess."

Nevertheless, Betty knew the voice was not that which had bid her look
to the stars, and she remained convinced that it belonged to Mr. Crailey
Gray, who had been too ill, a few hours earlier, to leave the Bareaud
house, and now, with Fanchon's kisses on his lips, came stealing into
her garden and sang to her a song he had made for another girl!

And the angels would leave heaven to listen when he sang, would they?
Poor Fanchon! No wonder she held him so tightly in leading strings!
He might risk his life all he wished at the end of a grappling-ladder,
dangling in a fiery cloud above nothing; but when it came to--ah, well,
poor Fanchon! Did she invent the headaches for him, or did she make him
invent them for himself?

If there was one person in the world whom Miss Betty held in bitter
contempt and scorn, it was the owner of that voice and that guitar.

CHAPTER X. Echoes of a Serenade

More than three gentlemen of Rouen wore their hearts in their eyes for
any fool to gaze upon; but three was the number of those who told their
love before the end of the first week of Mr. Carewe's absence, and told
it in spite of Mrs. Tanberry's utmost effort to preserve, at all
times, a conjunction between herself and Miss Betty. For the good lady,
foreseeing these declarations much more surely than did the subject of
them, wished to spare her lovely charge the pain of listening to them.

Miss Carewe honored each of the lorn three with few minutes of gravity;
but the gentle refusal prevented never a swain from being as truly
her follower as before; not that she resorted to the poor device of
half-dismissal, the every-day method of the school-girl flirt, who thus
keeps the lads in dalliance, but because, even for the rejected, it was
a delight to be near her. For that matter, it is said that no one ever
had enough of the mere looking at her. Also, her talk was enlivening
even to the lively, being spiced with surprising turns and amiably
seasoned with the art of badinage. To use the phrase of the time, she
possessed the accomplishments, an antiquated ch