“So it is rumoured,” said Dick. “But Mrs. Abington—— Oh, you confounded coxcomb! there is not a man in the Rooms who would not feel himself transported to the seventh heaven at the prospect of five minutes’ conversation with this lady. Come along, sir, and do not shame me and your own family by behaving like an insensible bear who will only dance to music.”
Tom suffered himself to be led to the lady.
She had watched with an amused smile the attitude of protest on the part of the good-looking young man. She was greatly amused; but in the course of her life she had had occasion to study the very young man, and she rather fancied that she had acquired some knowledge of him and his ways. He was an interesting study. She had found Dick Sheridan extremely interesting even during the previous half hour—though she had not begun her course of lessons with him. As a matter of fact, he had been in the nursery when she had begun to take her lessons.
She would have been greatly surprised if young Linley had acquiesced with any degree of eagerness in the suggestion made to him by Dick, and she did not feel in the least hurt to notice his frown and his general air of protest. She had once watched from the window of her cottage on the Edgeware Road the breaking-in of a spirited young colt. She had admired his protests; but before the day was done, the horse-breaker had put the bit in his mouth and was trotting him quietly round the field.
She had done something in the way of breaking in colts in her time, and they had all begun by protesting.
“I saw that you were a musician the instant you appeared, Mr. Linley,” she said. “I know that you are devoted to your art. Ah, sir, yours is an art worthy of the devotion of a lifetime. Is there any art besides music, Mr. Linley? I sometimes feel that there is none.”
The large eyes of the young man glowed.
“There is none, madam,” he said definitely.
His air of finality amused her greatly.