Mr. Haveloc told Miss Gage that everybody present owed her a vote of thanks. A remark which Mr. Casement did not forget.
When a convenient pause occurred, he leaned forward, and said, in a sufficiently marked tone, "Oh, by the bye, Claude! and how are all our friends at Florence?" Margaret absolutely turned pale, and could not avoid glancing anxiously at Mr. Haveloc.
He merely replied, taking up his glass to examine the dish he was about to carve. "I did not know, Mr. Casement, that you had any friends in any part of the world."
Margaret was the only person who observed that his hand trembled.
Miss Gage was pleased with his reply, for she knew the ill-natured point of the remark. Hubert laughed so heartily, that he was forced at intervals to beg Margaret's pardon for being so rude. Mr. Grey tried to turn the conversation. Mr. Casement looked sullen; and Mr. Haveloc, still appearing occupied with the dish before him, said, "There are two ways of carving these birds; which do you like best?"
"Oh! the old fashioned way, don't you Sir?" asked Miss Gage of Mr. Grey, "it is much the best."
"Yes; all old fashioned ways are in my opinion;" said Mr. Grey smiling, "but then I am an old man."
Margaret could not easily regain her composure of feeling after this incident; she pitied Mr. Haveloc, she admired Miss Gage, and she envied the readiness with which she directed the conversation into other channels until all constraint seemed banished from the party.
In the evening Hubert Gage beset Margaret with entreaties that she would play; and with a feeling of intense misery, she sat down to the piano and played a Fantasia by Moscheles with great delicacy and effect. Miss Gage turned round in the midst of her conversation with Mr. Grey, and told Margaret that she could take no excuses from her in future, now that she had shown how she could perform.
Then Mr. Casement begged Miss Gage to play some old airs, which she did with the utmost good humour; and afterwards sang whatever she was asked with an ease and sweetness that delighted Margaret; who for her own part would have much preferred dying at once to singing before half-a-dozen people.