“Stop!” said he this morning, when I had been weakly endeavoring to render a ciacconna from a suite of Lachner’s, which had moved me to thoughts too deep for tears at the last symphonie concert. “Stop, Fräulein May! Duty first; your voice before your fingers.”
“Let me try once again!” I implored.
He shut up the music and took it from the desk.
“Entbehren sollst du; sollst entbehren!” said he, dryly.
I took my lesson and then practiced shakes for an hour, while he talked to Adelaide; and then, she being summoned to visitors, he went away.
Later I found Adelaide in the midst of a lot of visitors—Herr Hauptmann This, Herr Lieutenant That, Herr Maler The Other, Herr Concertmeister So-and-So—for von Francius was not the only musician who followed in her train. But there I am wrong. He did not follow in her train; he might stand aside and watch the others who did; but following was not in his line.
There were ladies there too—gay young women, who rallied round Lady Le Marchant as around a master spirit in the art of Zeitvertreib.
This levée lasted till the bell rang for lunch, when we went into the dining-room, and found Sir Peter and his secretary, young Arkwright, already seated. He—Arkwright—was a good-natured, tender-hearted lad, devoted to Adelaide. I do not think he was very happy or very well satisfied with his place, but from his salary he half supported a mother and sister, and so was fain to “grin and bear it.”
Sir Peter was always exceedingly affectionate to me. I hated to be in the same room with him, and while I detested him, was also conscious of an unheroic fear of him. For Adelaide’s sake I was as attentive to him as I could make myself, in order to free her a little from his surveillance, for poor Adelaide Wedderburn, with her few pounds of annual pocket-money, and her proud, restless, ambitious spirit, had been a free, contented woman in comparison with Lady Le Marchant.