She put on a robe of soft,
snow-white texture, and by an impulse she yielded to, but could not
explain, bound her waist with a black sash, like a strain of
mourning in a song of innocence. She wore no ornaments save a ring,
the love-gift of Bigot, which she never parted with, but wore with a
morbid anticipation that its promises would one day be fulfilled.
She clung to it as a talisman that would yet conjure away her
sorrows; and it did! but alas! in a way little anticipated by the
constant girl! A blast from hell was at hand to sweep away her
young life, and with it all her earthly troubles.
She took up a guitar mechanically, as it were, and as her fingers
wandered over the strings, a bar or two of the strain, sad as the
sigh of a broken heart, suggested an old ditty she had loved
formerly, when her heart was full of sunshine and happiness, when
her fancy used to indulge in the luxury of melancholic musings, as
every happy, sensitive, and imaginative girl will do as a
counterpoise to her high-wrought feelings.
In a low voice, sweet and plaintive as the breathings of an Aeolian
harp, Caroline sang her Minne-song:--
"'A linnet sat upon a thorn
At evening chime.
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