As the boat glided away, and while two of them were employed at the oar, the remaining four took up their instruments and sang a parting glee.

It was quite midnight--the hush of all things around had grown more intense and profound--there was a wonderful might of silence in the shining air and amidst the shadows thrown by the near banks and the distant hills over the water.

So that as the music chiming in with the oars grew fainter and fainter, it is impossible to describe the thrilling and magical effect it produced.
The party ashore did not speak; there was a moisture, a grateful one, in the bright eyes of Teresa, as she leant upon the manly form of De Montaigne, for whom her attachment was, perhaps, yet more deep and pure for the difference of their ages.

A girl who once loves a man, not indeed old, but much older than herself, loves him with such a _looking up_ and venerating love! Maltravers stood a little apart from the couple, on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and thoughtful countenance.

"How is it," said he, unconscious that he was speaking half aloud, "that the commonest beings of the world should be able to give us a pleasure so unworldly?
What a contrast between those musicians and this music.