Music was proposed.  There are times when soft music hath not charms; when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar’s dust and is taken to fill horrid pauses.  Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang:  “I’m a laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!” Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary Branksburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people to Haste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority there, and very few places of assembly will be found where they are not; so the glowing appeal of the British ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the emptiness he addressed.  Clare was asked to entertain the company.  The singular child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over the appropriate illustrations to the ballad-monger’s repertory.

Clare sang a little Irish air.  Her duty done, she marched from the piano.  Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters; but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling an agony of pity for her child, that she might the more warrantably pity herself—­a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler like that heart the ballad-monger puts into our mouths so boldly.  Remember that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme, rendered fruitless in a minute, and by the System which had almost reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite.  She had enough of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.

Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria’s energetic nature prevented her from giving up.  Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the harder she clutched them.

She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow her.

“Adrian,” she said, turning upon him in the passage, “you mentioned a house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning.  I desire you to take me to that woman immediately.”

The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude.  He had hoped he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after enjoying the comedy of real life.

“My dear aunt"...he was beginning to insinuate.

“Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat,” said Mrs. Doria.

There was nothing for it but to obey.  He stamped his assent to the Pilgrim’s dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation and a nuisance.  However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.

What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or other, and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could use it in wrath.  She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse.  She dared not abuse her brother to his face:  him she would have to console.  Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she was aware, bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic, ground by a discussion of the case.  So she drove to Bessy Berry simply to inquire whither her nephew had flown.