“How horribly out of tune you do whistle—you go into a different key; this is more like it.”
“Yes, how sweetly she used to sing it. Do you remember the night we went to see her, the last time the piece was played? I threw her a bouquet, a splendid one it was, too, cost me three guineas in Covent Garden. We went afterwards and had supper at Scott's in the Haymarket. How jolly those days were. I don't seem to be able to enjoy myself now as I used to then.”
“What has become of her? One never hears of her.”
“She died soon after.”
“I am sorry I spoke of her; I didn't know.”
“Oh, it doesn't matter.” Then after a long silence, Willy said: “I hear your engagement is broken off.”
“Yes.” Frank drew a long and expressive breath, and, with melodramatic movements of the shoulders, he sighed. “I have not seen you since. Oh, I had terrible scenes with the father. They had a house up the river. I followed them, and put up at the Angler's Hotel. She told her father that I must be allowed to come to the house, and he had to give way. You don't know the river? Well, it is wonderful to awake at Maidenhead in the morning and hear the sparrows twittering in a piece of tangled vine; to see that great piece of water flowing so mildly in all the pretty summer weather. We used to live in flannels, and spent long afternoons together in the boat—we had such a spiffing boat, as light and as clean in the water as a fish—and we used to linger in the bulrushes, and come back when the moon was rising with our hands full of flowers.”
“But why was it broken off?”
“My uncle, old Mount Rorke, wants me to marry an heiress, and I have nothing except what he allows me, or scarcely anything. She used to wear a broad-brimmed straw hat, and the shadow fell over her face. I made a lot of sketches. I must show them to you one of these days when you come up to town, and I filled an album with verses. I used to write them at night. My window was right in front of the river, and the moon used to sail past, and in the morning I used to read her the poems I made overnight beneath the branches of the cedar, where we used to run the boat. But the father was a brute. I got the best of him once though. It was a private view day at the Academy, and he had forbidden Nellie to speak to me—even to notice me. I went straight up to her, and took her away under his very nose before he could stop us. We walked about all day. Oh! he was mad.”
“If she was willing to brave her father in that way, why was your engagement broken off?”