Fanny Mowbray listened to him with an earnestness that amounted to nervous anxiety, lest she should lose a word. His awful dogmas had taken fearful hold of her ardent and ill-regulated imagination; while his bland and affectionate manner, his fine features and graceful person, rendered him altogether an object of the most unbounded admiration and interest to her.
As an additional proof, probably, that he did not shrink from persecution, Mr. Cartwright again opened the piano-forte as soon as the tea equipage was removed, and asked Fanny if she would sing with him.
"With you, Mr. Cartwright!" she exclaimed in an accent of glad surprise: "I did not know that you sang. Oh! how I wish that I were a greater proficient, that I might sing with you as I would wish to do!"
"Sing with me, my dear child, with that sweet and pious feeling which I rejoice to see hourly increasing in your heart. Sing thus, my dearest child, and you will need no greater skill than Heaven is sure to give to all who raise their voice to it. This little book, my dear Miss Fanny," he continued, drawing once more the manuscript volume from his pocket, "contains much that your pure and innocent heart will approve. Do you know this air?" and he pointed to the notes of "Là ci darem' la mano."
"Oh yes!" said Fanny; "I know it very well."
"Then play it, my good child. This too we have taken as spoil from the enemy, and instead of profane Italian words, you will here find in your own language thoughts that may be spoken without fear."
Fanny instantly complied; and though her power of singing was greatly inferior to that of Rosalind, the performance, aided by the fine bass voice of Mr. Cartwright, and an accompaniment very correctly played, was very agreeable. Fanny herself thought she had never sung so well before, and required only to be told by the vicar what she was to do next, to prolong the performance till considerably past Mr. Cartwright's usual hour of retiring.
About an hour after the singing began, Henrietta approached Miss Torrington, and said in a whisper too low to be heard at the instrument, "My head aches dreadfully. Can you spare me?"
As she had not spoken a single syllable since the trio entered the drawing-room after dinner, Rosalind could not wholly refrain from a smile as she replied "Why, yes; I think I can."