That night, after Mrs. Easterfield had gone to bed, and before she slept, she heard something which instantly excited her attention; it was the sound of a guitar, and it came from the lawn in front of the house.  Jumping up, and throwing a dressing-gown about her, she cautiously approached the open window.  But the night was dark, and she could see nothing.  Pushing an armchair to one side of the window, she seated herself, and listened.  Words now began to mingle with the music, and these words were French.  Now she understood everything perfectly.  Mr. Du Brant was a musician, and had helped himself to the guitar in the library.

From the position in which she sat Mrs. Easterfield could look upon a second-story window in a projecting wing of the house, and upon this window, which belonged to Olive’s room, and which was barely perceptible in the gloom, she now fixed her eyes.  The song and the thrumming went on, but no signs of life could be seen in the black square of that open window.

Mrs. Easterfield was not a bad French scholar, and she caught enough of the meaning of the words to understand that they belonged to a very pretty love song in which the flowers looked up to the sky to see if it were blue, because they knew if it were the fair one smiled, and then their tender buds might ope; and, if she smiled, his heart implored that she might smile on him.  There was a second verse, much resembling the first, except that the flowers feared that clouds might sweep the sky; and they lamented accordingly.

Now, Mrs. Easterfield imagined that she saw something white in the depths of the darkness of Olive’s room, but it did not come to the front, and she was very uncertain about it.  Suddenly, however, something happened about which she could not be in the least uncertain.  Above Olive’s room was a chamber appropriated to the use of bachelor visitors, and from the window of this room now burst upon the night a wild, unearthly chant.  It was a song with words but without music, and the voice in which it was shot out into the darkness was harsh, was shrill, was insolently blatant.  And thus the clamorous singer sang: 

    “My angel maid—­ahoy! 
    If aught should you annoy,
        By act or sound,
        From sky or ground,
        I then pray thee
        To call on me
    My angel maid—­ahoy,
    My ange—­my ange—­l maid
    Ahoy!  Ahoy!  Ahoy!”

The music of the guitar now ceased, and no French words were heard.  No ditty of Latin origin, be it ever so melodious and fervid, could stand against such a wild storm of Anglo-Saxon vociferation.  Every ahoy rang out as if sea captains were hailing each other in a gale!

“What lungs he has” thought Mrs. Easterfield, as she put her hand over her mouth so that no one should hear her laugh.  At the open window, at which she still steadily gazed, she now felt sure she saw something white which moved, but it did not come to the front.