“Twenty minutes; I can’t do it under. And what’s more, I won’t try.”
“Twenty minutes! Do you consider no one’s time of value but your own?”
The head retreats, and steps are heard on the stairs and a clear impertinent voice chanting:
Should he upbraid I’ll own that he prevail,
And sing as sweetly as the nightingale.
No simple ballad now, but trills and shakes in the purest soprano imaginable; art decorating nature. And every trill and roulade, as he reflects indignantly, she owes to Charles Greville and to him alone. It was like a handful of bright spring water flung in his distinguished face.
Greville never acted hurriedly. He wrote a few words, folded and sealed them, went out to the hackney coachman and, desiring him to take the note to Mr. Romney in Cavendish Square, paid and dismissed him. The coach rolled slowly away and Greville sat down to read his magazine. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes passed; twenty-five. There was a noise of hurrying footsteps overhead, the opening and shutting of drawers, the click of the wardrobe door he knew so well, Mrs. Cadogan’s heavy weight pounding up the stair to the rescue. He turned another leaf and made a few notes. Half an hour.
Presently a rush downstairs; a flying figure in white with straw hat and ribbons, May herself in colour and bloom bursting impetuous into the room.
“Oh, it shall never happen again, Greville. Never, I swear.”
“It certainly never shall!” said he, placing his marker in the page and laying it down.