"I know my mind perfectly," she said. "I will forgive you if you are sorry."
"I am. But I liked hearing you play when you didn't know any one was there."
Mrs. Hancock looked vaguely and beamingly round.
"But I always thought that people played best when there was an audience to listen to them," she said.
"There was an audience," remarked Edward.
Mrs. Hancock saw the fallacy without a moment's hesitation, and enlarged on it till it became more clear than the sun at noonday.
"But she didn't know there was," she said lucidly, "and so it would count as if there wasn't. Listen, there is the rain beginning again, like that beautiful piece of Edward's which always makes me feel sad. He shall play it to us after dinner. Was it one of your pieces that Elizabeth was playing before, Edward?"
Mrs. Hancock always spoke of immortal works by classical masters as if Edward's atrocious renderings of them gave him the entire right and possession of them.
"No," said he, "it was her own. I shall always think of it as the Elizabintermezzo."
Mrs. Hancock turned an attentive eye on the asparagus dish.