“You may consider it as a very particular compliment, I assure you,” continued she, addressing herself so particularly to Mr. Beauclerc that he could not help being a little out of countenance,—“I have so begged and prayed, but she was never in voice or humour, or heart, or something. Yesterday, even Castlefort was almost on his knees for a song,—were not you, Lord Castlefort?”
Lord Castlefort pinched his pointed chin, and casting up an angry look, replied in a dissonant voice,—“I do not remember!”
“Tout voir, tout entendre, tout oublier,” whispered Lady Katrine to Mr. Churchill, as she stooped to assist him in the search for a music-book—“Tout voir, tout entendre, tout oublier, should be the motto adopted by all married people.”
Lady Castlefort seemed distressed, and turned over the leaves in such a flutter that she could not find anything, and she rose, in spite of all entreaties, leaving the place to her sister, who was, she said, “so much better a musician and not so foolishly nervous.” Lady Castlefort said her “voice always went away when she was at all—”
There it ended as far as words went; but she sighed, and retired so gracefully, that all the gentlemen pitied her.
There is one moment in which ill-nature sincerely repents—the moment when it sees pity felt for its victim.
Horace followed Lady Castlefort to the ottoman, on which she sank. Beauclerc remained leaning on the back of Lady Katrine’s chair, but without seeming to hear what she said or sung. After some time Mr. Churchill, not finding his attentions well received, or weary of paying them, quitted Lady Castlefort but sat down by Helen; and in a voice to be heard by her, but by no one else, he said—
“What a relief!—I thought I should never get away!” Then, favoured by a loud bravura of Lady Katrine’s, he went on—“That beauty, between you and me, is something of a bore—she—I don’t mean the lady who is now screaming—she should always sing. Heaven blessed her with song, not sense—but here one is made so fastidious!”
He sighed, and for some moments seemed to be given up to the duet which Lady Katrine and an officer were performing; and then exclaimed, but so that Helen only could hear,—“Merciful Heaven! how often one wishes one had no ears: that Captain Jones must be the son of Stentor, and that lady!—if angels sometimes saw themselves in a looking-glass when singing—there would be peace upon earth.”
Helen, not liking to be the secret receiver of his contraband good things, was rising to change her place, when softly detaining her, he said, “Do not be afraid, no danger—trust me, for I have studied under Talma.”