"Oh, yes; but all great composers are inspired."
"Do you consider our conductor was a great composer?"
"I daresay; but you must not ask me, I am not wise. Thoné is very wise, and she said to me the other day, after you were gone, 'He is one of us.'"
"But, Miss Benette, she is a gypsy, and I am not."
"We are not all alike because we are one. Can there be music without many combinations, and they each of many single sounds?"
Mirandos was putting on the pedal, and we paused at this moment, as he paused before the attacca. Santonio still remained in the doorway, and Davy was standing in the window against the crimson curtain, listening, and quite white with distress at the performance; for the keys every now and then jangled furiously, and a storm of arpeggi seemed to endanger the very existence of the fragile wires.
Suddenly a young lady swept past Santonio, and glanced at Davy in passing into our retreat. Santonio, of course, did not move an inch; certainly there was just room enough to clear him! But Davy fell back into the folds of the curtain, frowning, not at the young lady, but at the fantasia.
It was Miss Lawrence; and lo! before I could well recognize her, she stepped up to me and said, without a bow or any introductory flourish, "Are you Mr. Davy's pupil?"
"We are both, ma'am," I answered foolishly, half indicating Miss Benette, who was bending her lashes into the firelight. Miss Lawrence replied lightly, yet seriously,—
"Oh, I know she is, but you first, because I knew you again."