“All Bath will rise up and thank her, since she has enabled Mrs. Abington to come hither. Bath knows when it is blest.”
“Then Bath is blest indeed—more than all mankind. Was it not Pope who wrote, ‘Man never is but always to be blest’?”
“I do believe that it was Pope who said it. Your voice sets a bald line to music.”
“Lud! Mr. Sheridan, your thoughts are running on music to-day. Why is that, prithee? Is’t possible that since Miss Linley has given up music and has taken to marriage—a state from which music is perpetually absent—you feel that ’tis laid on you as a duty to keep people informed of the fact that there is music still in the world, even though Miss Linley no longer sings? But perhaps you believe exactly the opposite?”
“Just the opposite, madam?”
“Yes. Do you believe that there is no music in the world now that Miss Linley has promised to marry Mr. Long?”
He felt that his time had come; he would show her that he could be as cynical as the best of them—he meant the worst of them, only he did not know it.
“Ah! my dear lady, you and I know well that the young woman who gives up singing in favour of marriage exchanges melody for matrimony.”
“Subtle,” said the lady, with a critical closing of her eyes. “Too subtle for the general ear. ’Tis a kind of claret wit, this of yours; claret is not the beverage of the herd—they prefer rum. Melody on the one side and matrimony on t’other.”
“Madam, I am not talking to the crowd; on the contrary, I am addressing Mrs. Abington,” said young Mr. Sheridan, bowing with the true Angelo air. Mr. Angelo’s pupils were everywhere known by the spirit of their bows.