Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/357

Rh energies both mental and physical must be strangely impaired, or I should not have acted so weakly in many respects, as I have done;—but I have not been well this last day or two: I suppose it is with sleeping and eating so little, and thinking so much, and being so continually out of humour. But to return: I was exerting myself to sing and play for the amusement, and at the request of my aunt and Milicent, before the gentlemen came into the drawing-room (Miss Wilmot never likes to waste her musical efforts on ladies' ears alone): Milicent had asked for a little Scotch song, and I was just in the middle of it when they entered. The first thing Mr. Huntingdon did, was to walk up to Annabella:—

"Now, Miss Wilmot, won't you give us some music to-night?" said he. "Do now! I know you will, when I tell you that I have been hungering and thirsting all day, for the sound of your voice. Come! the piano's vacant."

It was; for I had quitted it immediately upon