Cornelius was too much offended and
self-occupied to be amused, but both Mrs. Raymount and Vavasor laughed,
the latter recognizing in Hester's extemporization a vein similar to his
own. But Hester was already searching, and presently found a song to her
mind--one, that was, fit for Cornelius.
"Come now, Corney," she said; "here is a song I should like you to be
able to sing!"
With that she turned to the keys, and sang a spirited ballad, of which
the following was the first stanza:
This blow is for my brother:
You lied away his life;
This for his weeping mother,
This for your own sweet wife;
For you told that lie of another
To pierce her heart with its knife.
And now indeed the singer was manifest; genius was plainly the soul of
her art, and her art the obedient body to the informing genius. Vavasor
was utterly enchanted, but too world-eaten to recognize the soul she
almost waked in him for any other than the old one. Her mother thought
she had never heard her sing so splendidly before.
The ballad was of a battle between two knights, a good and a
bad--something like Browning's _Count Gismond_: the last two lines
of it were--
So the lie went up in the face of heaven
And melted in the sun.
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