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 charm now on the point of disappearing, so carefully has it been snubbed under whenever exhibited.
The pursuing wraith of the young, it comes to sit, a ghost at every banquet, driving the flower of our youth to unheard-of exertions in search of escape, to dubious diplomacy, to dismal inaction, or to wine; yet time was when they set their hearts on "the accomplishments." Miss Betty Carewe at her harp, ah! it was a dainty picture: the clear profile, with the dark hair low across the temple, silhouetted duskily, in the cool, shadowy room, against the open window; the slender figure, one arm curving between you and the strings, the other gleaming behind them; the delicate little sandal stealing from the white froth of silk and lace to caress the pedal; the nimble hands fluttering across the long strands, "Like white blossoms borne on slanting lines of rain;" and the great gold harp rising to catch a javelin of sunshine that pierced the vines at the window where the honeysuckles swung their skirts to the refrain--it was a picture to return many a long year afterward, and thrill the reveries of old men who were then young.