Give me your arm, Mr. Falbe, and take me in to dinner at once, where I may drown my embarrassment in soup. Or does Michael go in first? Go on, wretch!"Presently they were seated at dinner, and Aunt Barbara could not help enlarging a little on her own discomfiture.
"It is all your fault, Michael," she said. "You have been in London all these weeks without letting me know anything about you or your friends, or what you were doing; so naturally I supposed you were leading some obscure kind of existence. Instead of which I find this sort of thing. My dear, what good soup! I shall see if I can't induce your cook to leave you. But bachelors always have the best of everything. Now tell me about your visit to Germany. Which was the point where we parted--Baireuth, wasn't it?
I would not go to Baireuth with anybody!""I went with Mr. Falbe," said Michael.
"Ah, Mr. Falbe has not asked me yet. I may have to revise what Isay," said Aunt Barbara daringly.
"I didn't ask Michael," said Hermann. "I got into his carriage as the train was moving; and my luggage was left behind.""I was left behind," said Sylvia, "which was worse. But I sent Hermann's luggage.""So expeditiously that it arrived the day before we left for Munich," remarked Hermann.
"And that's all the gratitude I get. But in the interval you lived upon Lord Comber.""I do still in the money I earn by giving him music lessons. Mike, have you finished the Variations yet?""Variations--what are Variations?" asked Aunt Barbara.
"Yes, two days ago. Variations are all the things you think about on the piano, Aunt Barbara, when you are playing a tune made by somebody else.""Should I like them? Will Mr. Falbe play them to me?" asked she.
"I daresay he will if he can. But I thought you loathed music.""It certainly depends on who makes it," said Aunt Barbara. "Idon't like ordinary music, because the person who made it doesn't matter to me. But if, so to speak, it sounds like somebody I know, it is a different matter."Michael turned to Sylvia.
"I want to ask your leave for something I have already done," he said.
"And if I don't give it you?"
"Then I shan't tell you what it is."
Sylvia looked at him with her candid friendly eyes. Her brother always told her that she never looked at anybody except her friends; if she was engaged in conversation with a man she did not like, she looked at his shirt-stud or at a point slightly above his head.
"Then, of course, I give in," she said. "I must give you leave if otherwise I shan't know what you have done. But it's a mean trick.
Tell me at once."
"I've dedicated the Variations to you," he said.
Sylvia flushed with pleasure.
"Oh, but that's absolutely darling of you," she said. "Have you, really? Do you mean it?""If you'll allow me."
"Allow you? Hermann, the Variations are mine. Isn't it too lovely?"It was at this moment that Aunt Barbara happened to glance at Michael, and it suddenly struck her that it was a perfectly new Michael whom she looked at. She knew and was secretly amused at the fiasco that always attended the introduction of amiable young ladies to Ashbridge, and had warned her sister-in-law that Michael, when he chose the girl he wanted, would certainly do it on his own initiative. Now she felt sure that Michael, though he might not be aware of it himself, was, even if he had not chosen, beginning to choose. There was that in his eyes which none of the importations to Ashbridge had ever seen there, that eager deferential attention, which shows that a young man is interested because it is a girl he is talking to. That, she knew, had never been characteristic of Michael; indeed, it would not have been far from the truth to say that the fact that he was talking to a girl was sufficient to make his countenance wear an expression of polite boredom. Then for a while, as dinner progressed, she doubted the validity of her conclusion, for the Michael who was entertaining her to-night was wholly different from the Michael she had known and liked and pitied. She felt that she did not know this new one yet, but she was certain that she liked him, and equally sure that she did not pity him at all. He had found his place, he had found his work; he evidently fitted into his life, which, after all, is the surest ground of happiness, and it might be that it was only general joy, so to speak, that kindled that pleasant fire in his face. And then once more she went back to her first conclusion, for talking to Michael herself she saw, as a woman so infallibly sees, that he gave her but the most superficial attention--sufficient, indeed, to allow him to answer intelligently and laugh at the proper places, but his mind was not in the least occupied with her. If Sylvia moved his glance flickered across in her direction: it was she who gave him his alertness. Aunt Barbara felt that she could have told him truthfully that he was in love with her, and she rather thought that it would be news to him; probably he did not know it yet himself. And she wondered what his father would say when he knew it.
"And then Munich," she said, violently recalling Michael's attention towards her. "Munich I could have borne better than Baireuth, and when Mr. Falbe asks me there I shall probably go.
Your Uncle Tony was in Germany then, by the way; he went over at the invitation of the Emperor to the manoeuvres.""Did he? The Emperor came to Munich for a day during them. He was at the opera," said Michael.
"You didn't speak to him, I suppose?" she asked.
"Yes; he sent for me, and talked a lot. In fact, he talked too much, because I didn't hear a note of the second act."Aunt Barbara became infinitely more interested.
"Tell me all about it, Michael," she said. "What did he talk about?""Everything, as far as I can remember, England, Ashbridge, armies, navies, music. Hermann says he cast pearls before swine--""And his tone, his attitude?" she asked.
"Towards us?--towards England? Immensely friendly, and most inquisitive. I was never asked so many questions in so short a time."Aunt Barbara suddenly turned to Falbe.
