Lady Sunningdale beckoned and screamed to him.
“Martin,” she cried, “you are too deevey! Monsieur Rusoff is really almost—didn’t you say almost—satisfied with the way you played that. And you learned all that exquisite thing—I used to play it years ago—while you were skating to-day, because he says you played it too abominably last night. Really, if I thought I could play it like that to-morrow evening I would go and skate all day. Now, don’t waste time, but play something more instantly.”
“Oh, please, Lady Sunningdale, I would rather not,” said he. “I really don’t think I could play any more to-night. I really am—I don’t know what—tired.”
Lady Sunningdale looked at his brilliant, vigorous face.
“Martin, I don’t believe you will ever learn to tell a decent, passable lie,” she said. “Why not tell me you had got cancer. Oh, there’s Suez Canal come back. Naughty! Monsieur Rusoff, won’t you tell him that he must. Just a scale or two. I adore scales, so satisfactory, are they not—so expected—as if it was a music-lesson. No? How tiresome of you.”
Karl laid his hand on Martin’s arm.
“No, my dear lady,” he said. “He’s never to play except when he wants to. But if you really want a little more music, and I——“
“Ah, but how enchanting of you. Monsieur Rusoff is going to play. Surely, dear Monica, you will wait. You are not going yet?”
“Desolated, Violet, but Stella says she feels a little faint. The hot room, I suppose. She is waiting for me outside. How deliciously you play, Mr. Challoner. I suppose you practise a great deal. Won’t you come some day and——“
She broke off, for Martin had simply turned his back on her, and was firmly edging his way through the crowd to the door. Then Lady Monica’s maternal instinct positively leaped to a conclusion, and Martin’s rudeness was completely forgiven.