“Do you promise not to agree with my friends?”
“Most solemnly.”
“Well, you must know there is something very pathetic to me about old age. The sight of an old man sympathizing with the young, hearing up bravely under the ills of life and his load of years, always touches me to the heart. Now, you and Mr. Frobisher and Mr. Waldteufel—well, I need not comment on your appearance. Lucy—well, Lucy was just too lovely. She had what I call her inspired look, and was simply beautiful.” And lifting her eyes for a second,—no, a second had been an age, compared with the duration of that glance so momentary and yet so intensely questioning,—she flashed him through and through. Through and through, yet saw nothing. The Don, felt he or not the shock of that electric glance, sat impassive, spoke no answer, looked no reply. She raised her eyes again to his. No, his look was not impassive; he was simply awaiting with interest the rest of her story. That, at least, was all she could see.
“Where was I?” she began again, driving from her mind, with an effort, a tumultuous throng of hopes and fears. “Oh I well, you gentlemen handled your bows gracefully, of course, and all that, and Lucy was irresistible” (another flash), “of—course; but the central figure of the picture was Mr. Whacker. Dear Uncle Tom! Isn’t he a grand old man? I don’t know why it was, but when I saw in the midst of you his snowy head contrasting so strongly, so strangely, with Lucy’s youthful bloom, with the manly vigor of the rest, my eyes filled with tears. Was it so very foolish?” And her eyes, as she lifted them to his, half inquiring, half deprecatory, were suffused afresh with the divine dew of sympathy.
“Foolish!” exclaimed the Don, with a vehemence so sudden that it made her start, his nostrils dilating and a dark flush mounting even to his forehead,—“foolish!” And bending over her he poured down into her swimming eyes a look so intense and searching that she felt that he was reading her very heart.
“Thanks!” said he, with abrupt decision. “Thanks!”
Mary breathed quicker, she knew not why. The tension was painful. “Yes,” said she, rather aimlessly, “and then you all looked so earnest, so serenely happy, so forgetful of this poor sordid world.”
“Yes,” said he, musingly, “that seems to me the office of music,—to give rest to the weary, to smooth out the wrinkles from the brain and brow, to give respite; to enable us, for a time, at least, to forget.”
He seemed to muse for a moment, then turning suddenly to her with a changed expression: “It was always so,” said he; then looking up quickly, “Do you like Homer?”
“Homer!” exclaimed she, startled by the abrupt transition. “I cannot say that he is one of my favorite authors.”