“To me!” said Mary, when the Don had offered her his arm. “I feel much honored.” And with a formal bow she rested the tips of her fingers upon his sleeve.
The irony of her tones grated upon his ear, and he turned quickly and bent upon her a puzzled though steady gaze.
“Honored?”
That look of honest surprise reassured her woman’s heart, but made her feel that she had forgotten herself in meeting a courtesy with an incivility.
They always know just what to do.
Passing her arm farther within his, and leaning upon him with a coquettish pressure, she looked up with a gracious smile.
“Certainly. Have I not the arm of the primo violino,—the lion of the evening?”
And the primo violino wondered how on earth he had ever imagined that she was vexed.
Very naturally, I cannot remember, after the lapse of years, what quintet they played that evening. All that I distinctly recall is that it was a composition in which the piano was very prominent. My grandfather was (as I have, perhaps, said before) as proud of Lucy’s playing as though she had been his own daughter; and I suspect that he and the Herr made the selection with a view to showing her off.
Mary thought she had never seen Lucy look so graceful as when, sounding “A,” she turned upon the piano-stool, and, with her arm extended backwards and her fingers resting upon the keys, she gave the note to each of the players in turn; her usually serene face lit with the enthusiasm of expectancy. It was a truly lovely face,—lovely at all times, but peculiarly so when suffused with a certain soul-lit St. Cecilia look it wore at times like this. Alice sparkled, and Mary shone; but Lucy glowed,—glowed with the half-hidden fire of fervid affections and high and holy thoughts. Alice was a bounding, bubbling fountain, Mary a swift-flowing river, Lucy a still lake glassing the blue heavens in its unknown depths. Wit—imagination—soul.