“Let us return to our lesson,” said her father. “Dwell lightly on ‘deceivers ever,’ Maria; and I think, Betsy, you might give full value to the minim rest before ‘Sigh no more,’ after the ‘hey nonny!’ I think I see the delicate humour of the composer’s treatment of the song better now than I did ten minutes ago.”
But the girls were too unnerved to be able to return to their lesson just then. They remonstrated with their father.
“Well, perhaps one lesson in the day is enough,” said he, “and Tom has just had his.”
It was altogether very amusing and quite infamous, Bath said. Heavens! the way in which that woman pursued her course, being on with a new love quite two days before she was off with the old, was absolutely shameless.
“A female comet with an ardent train—no fixed star in the firmament,” said Mr. Walpole, when it was found that Mrs. Abington had discarded Tom Linley and had taken on Dick Sheridan. It was found that she had done so within an hour of Tom’s dismissal.
“The comet has in all ages been looked on as a portent of disaster,” said George Selwyn. “I wonder what does this particular heavenly body portend?”
“I am no astrologer, but I dare swear that Mr. Cumberland’s new comedy will be damned,” said Walpole.
“My dear Horry, the obvious needs no portent! ’Twould be a ridiculous waste of fuel to send a comet flaring through the sky merely to let the world know that Sir Joshua’s macaw will lose his tail-feathers in the moulting season,” said Selwyn. “Mrs. Abington has not come to Bath for a whole month solely to give Nan Cattley a chance of making the damning of Cumberland’s play a certainty.”