“My dear boy!” protested his mother, with a laugh that to her son’s practised ear betrayed annoyance. “As though you hadn’t had the best lessons obtainable in Paris!”
“Half a dozen—oh yes. They certainly helped me to carry on alone afterwards.”
“You’ve had your mother to help you, my boy; mustn’t forget that,” suddenly said Frederick Tregaskis from his corner. He chuckled a little: “Mustn’t forget that.”
“Do play something to us, Morris,” interposed Hazel quickly. She looked at him with the eternal laugh dancing in her pretty eyes.
But Morris had turned to Rosamund.
“Shall I?” he asked her, aware of the subtlety of such an appeal.
“Yes,” she said gently, looking at him.
Morris possessed an almost irresistible attraction, one which is sometimes the attribute of weak natures—an exceedingly direct gaze.
He looked straight at Rosamund, and his eyes smiled at her.
“Then I am going to play to you,” he said under his breath, with the lightest possible emphasis. He turned to the piano at once, but not before he had seen the colour surge up into her face.