He was
flattered by her unobtrusive but obviously sincere admiration for
himself; she seemed to see him in a more favourable light, and to
understand him better than anyone outside of this charming family
had ever done. Instead of snubbing him as his father, brother and
sisters did, she drew him out, listened attentively to all he chose to
say, and evidently wanted him to say still more. He told a college
friend that he knew he was in love now; he really was, for he liked
Miss Allaby's society much better than that of his sisters.
Over and above the recommendations already enumerated, she had
another in the possession of what was supposed to be a very
beautiful contralto voice. Her voice was certainly contralto, for
she could not reach higher than D in the treble; its only defect was
that it did not go correspondingly low in the bass: in those days,
however, a contralto voice was understood to include even a soprano if
the soprano could not reach soprano notes, and it was not necessary
that it should have the quality which we now assign to contralto. What
her voice wanted in range and power was made up in the feeling with
which she sang. She had transposed "Angels ever bright and fair"
into a lower key, so as to make it suit her voice, thus proving, as
her mamma said, that she had a thorough knowledge of the laws of
harmony; not only did she do this, but at every pause she added an
embellishment of arpeggios from one end to the other of the
keyboard, on a principle which her governess had taught her; she
thus added life and interest to an air which everyone- so she said-
must feel to be rather heavy in the form in which Handel left it.
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