The preparation of this one duet alone obliged Mr. Castellani to be nearly every day at Enderby. A musician has inexhaustible patience in teaching his own music. Castellani hammered at every bar and every note with Pamela. He did not hesitate at unpleasant truth. She had received the most expensive instruction from a well-known singing-master, and, according to Castellani, everything she had been taught was wrong. “If you had been left alone to sing as the birds sing you would be ever so much better off,” he said; “the man has murdered a very fine organ. If I had had the teaching of you, you would have sung as well as Trebelli by this time.”
Pamela thrilled at the thought. O, to sing like some great singer—to be able to soar skyward on the wings of music—to sing as he sang! She had known him a fortnight by this time, and was deeply in love with him. In moments of confidence by the piano he called her Pamela, treating her almost as if she were a child, yet with a touch of gallantry always—an air that said, “You are beautiful, dear child, and you know it; but I have lived my life.” Before Mrs. Greswold he was more formal, and called her Miss Ransome.
All barriers were down now between Riverdale and the Manor. Mrs. Hillersdon was going to make an extra large house-party on purpose to patronise the concert. It was to be on the 7th of September: the partridge-shooting would be in full swing, and the shooters assembled. Mrs. Greswold had been to tea at Riverdale. There seemed to be no help for it, and George Greswold was apparently indifferent.
“My dearest, your purity of mind will be in no danger from Mrs. Hillersdon. Even were she still Louise Lorraine, she could not harm you—and you know I am not given to consider the qu’on dire t’on in such a case. Let her come here by all means, so long as she is not obnoxious to you.”
“She is far from that. I think she has the most delightful manners of any woman I ever met.”
“So, no doubt, had Circe, yet she changed men into swine.”
“Mr. Cancellor would not believe in her if she were not a good woman.”
“I should set a higher value on Cancellor’s opinion if he were more of a man of the world, and less of a bigot. See what nonsense he talked about the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill.”
“Nonsense! O, George, if you knew how it distressed me to hear you take the other side—the unchristian side!”
“I can find no word of Christ’s against such marriages, and the Church of old was always ready with a dispensation for any such union, if it was made worth the Church’s while to be indulgent. It was the earnest desire of the Roman Catholic world that Philip should marry Elizabeth. You are Cancellor’s pupil, Mildred, and I cannot wonder if he has made you something of a bigot.”