A meaning
smile came over the elder woman's face all at once, not unpleasantly.
She was a handsome woman for her age, but very dark and gipsy-like,
after the fashion of the Eweses, with keen Italian eyes and a large
smooth expanse of powerful forehead. Lightly she ran her hand over
the keys with a masterly touch, and fixed her glance as she did so
on Elma. There was a moment's pause. Miss Ewes eyed her closely.
She was playing a tune that seemed oddly familiar to Elma's brain
somehow--to her brain, not to her ears, for Elma felt certain,
even while she recognised it most, she had never before heard it.
It was a tune that waxed and waned and curled up and down sinuously,
and twisted in and out and--ah yes, now she knew it--raised its
sleek head, and darted out its forked tongue, and vibrated with
swift tremors, and tightened and slackened, and coiled resistlessly
at last in great folds all around her. Elma listened, with eager
eyes half starting from her head, with clenched nails dug deep
into the tremulous palms, as her heart throbbed fast and her nerves
quivered fiercely. Oh, it was wrong of Miss Ewes to tempt her like
this! It was wrong, so wrong of her! For Elma knew what it was at
once--the song she had heard running vaguely through her head the
night of the dance--the night she fell in love with Cyril Waring.
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