So they all shook hands frigidly, and the musician asked what time breakfast was; and they left him alone in the long drawing-room, and went upstairs. Lady Joan still found him there when she came down again, half-an-hour later; he was at the piano, but he got up as she came in.
"You are the finest woman I ever met," he said with emotion.
She made a gesture of impatience.
"Don't cover me with virtues I don't possess; I can't stand it," she said sharply; she had a very unmusical voice, he thought. "Don't you know that my god is expediency? It is the only one that is any good for this world. I don't want you to marry Norah, or I should not have come back to the inn to ask you to marry me. Do you suppose my pride suffered nothing by that? However, you are going to marry her because it is absolutely the only way out of it, and I have been obliged to give in to you both. But for Heaven's sake don't imagine I am doing it from unselfishness, or any of that bosh, because I'm not."
"Then you have not forgiven me?" he asked humbly.
"I shall never forgive you," said Lady Joan, decidedly; "is it not an insult that you should suppose me capable of forgiveness?"
"Perhaps it is," said the musician, thoughtfully. "Why was I born so accursedly unlucky?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. But you seem to be going to have all you want now, so it is about time you ceased railing at your fate. I suppose if I were properly unselfish I should efface myself at once, and part from you in an affecting scene. But the people who make affecting scenes are apt to forget that they have got to meet again afterwards as ordinary actors in an ordinary play, and then the memory of the affecting scene makes them sheepish; so I prefer to tell you that I am merely and vulgarly angry with you for inviting me to make a fool of myself. Not that I envy that poor child upstairs either; she doesn't understand you a bit, and you will wound her half-a-dozen times a day. It is not my affair, however, and you will have to get through it together somehow; I wash my hands of you both."
The musician said he thought they might manage it, perhaps; and Lady Joan pulled down the blind in eloquent silence, and rang the bell. He took the hint and held out his hand.
"Good-night. You will come to breakfast?"