It was the first discordant note. At home, the colonel subscribed to
the opera, and enjoyed the music. A plantation song of the olden time,
as he remembered it, borne upon the evening air, when sung by the
tired slaves at the end of their day of toil, would have been
pleasing, with its simple melody, its plaintive minor strains, its
notes of vague longing; but to the colonel's senses there was to-night
no music in this hackneyed popular favourite. In a metropolitan music
hall, gaudily bedecked and brilliantly lighted, it would have been
tolerable from the lips of a black-face comedian. But in this quiet
place, upon this quiet night, and in the colonel's mood, it seemed
like profanation. The song of the coloured girl, who had dreamt that
she dwelt in marble halls, and the rest, had been less incongruous; it
had at least breathed aspiration.
Mrs. Treadwell was still dozing in her armchair. The colonel,
beckoning Miss Laura to follow him, moved to the farther end of the
piazza, where they might not hear the singers and the song.
"It is delightful here, Laura. I seem to have renewed my youth. I
yield myself a willing victim to the charm of the old place, the old
ways, the old friends."
"You see our best side, Henry. Night has a kindly hand, that covers
our defects, and the starlight throws a glamour over everything. You
see us through a haze of tender memories. When you have been here a
week, the town will seem dull, and narrow, and sluggish.
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