"I'm not quite sure
if it was July or August, but it was in 1858."
"You will excuse me, Valpy, but I hardly think that these reminiscences
of a ballet-dancer are amusing," said Frettlby, curtly, pouring himself
out a glass of wine. "Let us change the subject."
Notwithstanding the plainly-expressed wish of his host Brian
felt strongly inclined to pursue the conversation. Politeness, however,
forbade such a thing, and he consoled himself with the reflection that,
after dinner, he would ask old Valpy about the ballet-dancer whose name
caused Mark Frettlby to exhibit such strong emotion. But, to his
annoyance, when the gentlemen went into the drawing-room, Frettlby took
the old colonist off to his study, where he sat with him the whole
evening talking over old times.
Fitzgerald found Madge seated at the piano in the drawing-room playing
one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words.
"What a dismal thing that is you are playing, Madge," he said lightly,
as he sank into a seat beside her. "It is more like a funeral march
than anything else."
"Gad, so it is," said Felix, who came up at this moment. "I don't care
myself about 'Op. 84' and all that classical humbug. Give me something
light--'Belle Helene,' with Emelie Melville, and all that sort of
thing."
"Felix!" said his wife, in a stern tone.
"My dear," he answered recklessly, rendered bold by the champagne he
had taken, "you observed--"
"Nothing particular," answered Mrs.
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