"Do you mean things like the AIR IN G WITH VARIATIONS? I'm afraid I never shall. There's no tune in them."
Music was as fatal to Laura's equilibrium as wine would have been. Finding herself next Mr. Strachey, she now turned to him and said, with what she believed to be ease of manner: "Mr. Strachey, will you please tell me what that picture is hanging over the mantelpiece? I've been looking at it ever since I came in, but I can't make it out. Are those ghosts, those things behind the man, or what?"
It took Mr. Strachey a minute to recover from his astonishment. He stroked hard, and the look he bent on Laura was not encouraging.
"It seems to be all the same face," continued the child, her eyes on the picture.
"That," said Mr. Strachey, with extreme deliberation: "that is the portrait, by a great painter, of a great poet—Dante Alighieri."
"Oh, Dante, is it?" said Laura showily—she had once heard the name. "Oh, yes, of course, I know now. He wrote a book, didn't he, called FAUST? I saw it over there by the door.—What lovely books!"
But here Mr. Strachey abruptly changed his seat, and Laura's thirst for information was left unquenched.
The evening passed, and she was in blessed ignorance of anything being amiss, till the next morning after breakfast she was bidden to Mrs. Gurley.
A quarter of an hour later, on her emerging from that lady's private sitting-room, her eyes were mere swollen slits in her face. Instead, however, of sponging them in cold water and bravely joining her friends, Laura was still foolish enough to hide and have her cry out. So that when the bell rang, she was obliged to go in to public prayers looking a prodigious fright, and thereby advertising to the curious what had taken place.
Mrs. Gurley had crushed and humiliated her. Laura learnt that she had been guilty of a gross impertinence, in profaning the ears of the Principal and Mrs. Strachey with Thalberg's music, and that all the pieces she had brought with her from home would now be taken from her. Secondly, Mr. Strachey had been so unpleasantly impressed by the boldness of her behaviour, that she would not be invited to the drawing-room again for some time to come.