It was powerful when she called upon it for power; but, at the same time, flexible and capable of much pretence at feeling.

She could bring it to a whisper that would almost melt your heart with tenderness,--as she had melted Sir Florian's, when she sat near to him reading poetry; and then she could raise it to a pitch of indignant wrath befitting a Lady Macbeth when her husband ventured to rebuke her.

And her ear was quite correct in modulating these tones.

She knew,--and it must have been by instinct, for her culture in such matters was small,--how to use her voice so that neither its tenderness nor its wrath should be misapplied.

There were pieces in verse that she could read,--things not wondrously good in themselves,--so that she would ravish you; and she would so look at you as she did it that you would hardly dare either to avert your eyes or to return her gaze.