—and Damon had replied (not mumbling his lines, as a privileged actor sometimes does at rehearsal, but addressing them properly to the hapless Laura)—
"Consider, fair, the ever-restless pow'r,
Shifts with the breeze, and changes with the hour:
Above restraint, he scorns a fixt abode,
And on his silken plumes flies forth the rambling god."
Then Lady Sybil took out her violin from its case and drew the bow across the strings.
"We'll let you off the song, if you like, Mr. Moore," Lady
Adela said to the young baritone, but in a very half-hearted kind of way.
"Oh, no," said he, pleasantly, "perhaps this may be my only rehearsal."
"The audience," observed Lord Rockminster, who, at a little distance, was lying back in a garden-chair, smoking a cigarette—"the audience would distinctly prefer to have the song sung."