“Your music is like a vice, Hawberk,” he told the composer, at a tea-party next day. “It takes possession of a man. I go night after night to hear Fanchonette, though I know I am wasting my time.”
“Thanks. Fanchonette is a very pretty opera, quite the best thing I have done,” replied Hawberk, easily; “and it is very well sung and acted. The singing is good all round, but Lisa Vivanti is a pearl.”
“You are enthusiastic,” said Sefton; and then smiling at the composer’s young wife, who went everywhere with her husband, and whose province was to wear smart frocks and look pretty, “You must keep your eye upon him, Mrs. Hawberk, lest this Venetian siren should prove as fatal as the Lurlei.”
“No fear,” cried Hawberk. “Little Lisa is as straight as an arrow and as good as gold. She lives as sedately as a nun, with a comfortable dragon in the shape of an aunt. She would hardly look at a ripping diamond bracelet which some cad sent her the other day. She just tossed bracelet and letter over to her old singing master, and told him to send it back to the giver. She has no desire for carriages and horses and fine raiment. She comes to the theatre in a shabby little black frock, and she lives like a peasant on a third floor in this neighbourhood.”
“That will not last,” said Sefton. “Your rara avis will soon realize her own value. The management will be called upon to provide her with a stable and a chef, and diamonds will be accepted freely as fitting tribute to her talents.”
“I don’t believe it. I think she is a genuine, honest, right-minded young woman, and that she will gang her ain gait in spite of all counter influences. There may have been some love affair in the past that has sobered her. I think there has been; for there is a little boy who calls her mother, and for whom she takes no trouble to account. I will vouch for my little Lisa, and I have allowed Mrs. Hawberk to go and see her.”
“She is quite too sweet,” assented the lady; “such a perfectly naïve little person.”
“Upon my honour,” said Hawberk, as his wife fluttered away and was absorbed in a group of acquaintances, “I believe Vivanti is a good woman, in spite of the little peccadillo in a sailor suit.”
“I am very glad to hear it, for I want you to introduce me to the lady.”
“Oh, but really now that is just what I don’t care about doing. She is keeping herself to herself, and is working conscientiously at her musical education. She is a very busy woman, and she has no idea of society, or its ways and manners. What can she want with such an acquaintance as you?”